Dan Brockhoff of Tanunda is mad about bees.
Just ask him. He’s more than happy to share the wealth of knowledge he’s acquired since he bought his first hive about five years ago.
Dan now has more than 20 hives dotted from Morgan to Oakbank, and a sweet side business producing and selling honey as The Barossa Beekeeper.
This Friday is World Bee Day, and Dan, along with bee enthusiasts everywhere, will be celebrating the contribution of these busy little pollinators that are, in essence, essential to our survival.
“Bees are amazing. There’s so much to what they do, and what they provide for us,” Dan told The Leader.
“It’s not just the production of honey and wax and pollination services, bees will teach you something each time you open up a hive.”
World Bee Day aims to promote the integral role bees play in food security, biodiversity and ecosystem health.
According to Wheen Bee Foundation, nearly two-thirds of Australia’s agricultural production benefits from bee pollination.
Since starting his bee-keeping venture, Dan has learned a lot about the fascinating life of bees, and the environment on which they rely to do their amazing work.
“If you go back 40 or 50 years, there was much more native vegetation around South Australia. That’s diminished so much, there’s not the commercial bee keepers that there used to be,” said Dan.
“Having said that, there’s a lot of people now who have developed the interest and have got a hive in their backyard.”
Spreading his hives over several different regions allows Dan to take advantage of the warmer climate in some areas, so he has productive bees for more of the year.
“Bees will get a longer flying time per day in a warmer zone, so hives in the Murraylands have got that extra bit of time each day to fly and collect the pollen and the nectar that they require at this time of year,” said Dan.
“Not only is it good for the bees to be in a warmer climate in winter time, you also get varietal honey.
“In the Murraylands there’s mallee trees, so you can produce a mallee honey, and then you might have bees feeding on blue gum in the Adelaide Hills.”
Dan explained that the most common bee used for bee-keeping in Australia is the European honey bee, introduced to our shores by early settlers.
In fact, 2022 marks the 200th anniversary since this amazing little creature arrived.
It’s hard not to be fascinated by the social structure of bees, which, according to Dan, usually consists of one queen, workers and drones in each hive.
“All the worker bees are females, and then you have drones which are male,” he explained.
“Males are purely there to breed with a new virgin queen if the hive produces them, and they don’t do much else, they don’t collect pollen or nectar.
“When conditions get cold like this, you find all the worker bees push the drone bees out of the hive, and they have to go and fend for themselves and usually die off.
“There’s a lot more you could say about that!” he laughed.
A queen bee begins life as a regular fertilised egg, but is selected and fed a substance known as ‘royal jelly’ by worker bees when they decide the hive is in need of a new queen.
“The jelly is just for queen bees, and it’s that nourishment that literally grows a queen in that cell,” said Dan.
‘Splitting’ hives and experimenting with queen breeding and genetics are areas of interest that have led Dan to expand his enterprise, and he hopes to see it continue to grow over the coming years.
He and wife, Kerryn Fry currently sell their honey at the Mount Pleasant Farmers’ Market, which will, incidentally, be marking World Bee Day this weekend with a range of workshops, expert talks and activities.
“As long as you’ve got a good queen that’s keeping the hive clean and laying correctly, then honey production is not that hard,” said Dan.
“It’s been a real education for me about the environment in general.
“Bees are great teachers.”