HISTORY

Arataki Honey Rotorua has been a market leader and has innovatively and successfully exported package bees and queens to Canada every year since 1985. The first shipments were in conventional wooden containers, but in 1987, Russell Berry saw the need for a better system. He developed the innovative Arataki tube package, which immediately proved to be successful. With some minor evolutionary improvements, they have been used ever since.

Russell Berry with tube packages - 1987

Rotorua Daily Post 1987

The principal aims of the package, and those which we have achieved, are as follows:

Our packages give the bees a greater degree of control over their environment inside the package, despite changes of temperature outside, than is available in the traditional package. Our design allows the bees to draw cool, fresh air from low down and to discharge warm, aromatic air high up. This prevents them breathing stale air discharged from other packages while working natural air convection. We also made the packages narrow enough for the bees to restrict the airflow when it is cold outside the tube. This narrowness has the added advantage of reducing the light entering the tube, thus modifying the effect on the bees when the tubes are moved from dark into light.

It is important that we made the package with a large interior surface and a strip of mesh stretching nearly the full length of the tube. The bees can cling to this during transportation so lessening the stress which occurs when bees cling to each other as in a swarm. This is particularly important on rough air flights or on rough roads. This means that bees live longer after they have been hived.

We ship 704 Arataki Tube Packages on one airline pallet. These are made up of 4 bins of 176 tubes per bin which can be moved by fork lift. Another very important feature of Arataki Tube Packages is the ease of feeding while they are in the bin and the ease of hiving them. They are extremely easy to shake out.

BEES IN NEW ZEALAND

The genetic material we use was imported into NZ by David Yanke and comes from three Queen Breeding institutes in Europe, namely Lunz, Austria; Kirchhain, Germany; and Mayen, Germany. These Institutes concentrate on varroa tolerance. The Institute in Kirchhain Germany, has been trialling their Carnica against Primorsky Queens brought straight from Baton Rouge and representing all the lines they maintain there. Their data shows that their best Carnica is as tolerant as the average Primorsky, and light years ahead when it comes to temperament, productivity, and swarming. (i.e. the Primorsky swarm much more readily then do Carnica.)

Yanke’s evaluations have shown that the Carnica hybrids are much more varroa tolerant than his yellow bees. Feedback from other commercial beekeepers and my own experience backs this up.

Winter conditions in the deep south

WHAT WE OFFER

During our 22 years supplying Canadian beekeepers, they have found that NZ Italian bees have performed very successfully, but are now finding that our NZ Carniolan
bees are even better. We can supply package bees with either Italian or Carniolan queens.

Our innovative packaging system and our long experience ensures that the bees arrive in the best possible condition.

VIEW VIDEO

(8 MB approx.)

Packages in controlled storage ready for export -2008.

1,408 1kg. packages en route to the airport

We are continuously striving to provide the best bees for Northern Hemisphere conditions. Our breeding programme is continually being modified to bring you the best Carniolan queens and bees possible and to further improve our stock. In 2008, we transported thousands of our virgin queens in mating boxes 400km north to get mated with predominantly Carniolan drones, working in with a beekeeper who supplies a lot of bees for our packages.

Carniolan queen and bees in a breeder hive

We produce Carniolan queens in NZ, away from Small Hive Beetles and EFB, which unfortunately is present in Australia. We produce up to 25,000 queens a year, mainly for sales overseas. Most of these queens are Carniolan. We are working at developing bees that are tolerant to varroa mites. Arataki farms 20,000 hives of bees mainly for honey production and for pollination of pip and stone fruit, kiwifruit, blueberries and many other crops. Over 10,000 hives of ours are annually used for paid pollination of crops. This gives us a good base to choose breeders from, but we are now moving into A.I. We hope to make better use of our carniolan breeder queens which we have purchased from David Yanke, a queen breeder in NZ.

We have recently purchased Schley II A.I. equipment. This will further improve our breeding lines to produce quality, disease free honey bees, great for pollination and honey production.