Apprentice bee-keeper

By PHILIPPA STEVENSON

Name: Sam Leathwick

Age: 16

Job title: Apprentice bee-keeper

Working hours: 8.30am to 5.30pm or later when necessary


Employer: Lorimer's Honey, Hillcrest Apiaries. Most bee-keeping businesses are owner-operators or small businesses.

Pay: Around $20,000, rising with experience and responsibility. Most workers aim to be self-employed.

Qualifications needed: An interest in bees, good observation and ability to work hard. Courses in apiculture are available.

Career prospects: Commercial bee-keeping. With university study, a scientific career in entomology.

Q.What do you do?

A. I'm part of a team of three bee-keepers and there is just no typical day, which is what makes it so interesting.

Today we are the home base, checking small colonies of bees for queens and to see that they are up to standard for pollination. We've got hives all over the Waikato and as far as Taupo and most days we are on the road checking them.

Depending on the time of year we check on their food stores of nectar and honey, feed them, check for disease, check for the bee mite varroa.

It's an important job because it supports the whole primary industry. Agriculture wouldn't survive if bees didn't pollinate crops and now, because of varroa, bees can't survive without human intervention to control the mites.

I've found I'm good at it. I like a job where I can work hard with integrity and never get bored.

Q. Why did you choose this job?

A. I left school after the first term this year and bee-keeping is something I thought I'd be good at.

It's good to be outdoors - you get to go lots of cool places, but most of all I find bees fascinating. You don't want to get me started talking about bees!

Apiculture scientist Mark Goodwin got me into it. He is a family friend and his son and I kept bees for a couple of years when we were about 12.

Q. What sort of training do you get?

A. It's on-the-job training and I'm also studying by correspondence for a certificate of apiculture from Telford Rural Polytechnic in Balclutha.

Q. What skills do you need to be a bee-keeper?

A. There's plenty of space for young people - it's just a case of getting your name passed around, maybe at a bee-keepers' meeting. Usually someone is looking for a worker.

You've got to have an interest in bees and an understanding of them and to be observant to pick up when things are not right. Long-time bee-keepers get a gut instinct for things. And you've got to be a hard worker. I didn't get home until midnight one night.

Good navigation is important. I got lost in Scotsman Valley Rd. I saw some interesting scenery but without the GPS I'd have ended up in Kiwitahi.

Q. Best part of the job?

A. The best thing is having lunch in a different place every day with nice scenery, like on the banks of the Waikato River where it leaves Lake Taupo. The water is so clear you can see the bottom of the riverbed.

Q. Worst part of the job?

A. The worst job is scraping propolis out of the hives after the honey has gone. It's a very valuable product but it's a sticky, messy, fairly boring job.

Q. What are your goals?

A. In about five years I'd like to go to a Third World country and set up a bee-keeping operation and run it for about five years.

I could also use my certificate in apiculture as a bridging course to go to university and study entomology, but I'd earn more if I became a commercial bee-keeper with my own business.