What is in a beehive? apart from bees!
How do bees store their honey?
Is a beehive just a couple of boxes?
In New Zealand it is illegal to have a beehive in a Skep (the old traditional upside down basket shaped hive) bees must be kept in a hive with removable frames. This is so the hive can be inspected for disease regularly.
Each box usually has 10 frames with beeswax sheets to encourage the bees to make their comb in an orderly way.
The bees draw out the wax to make the comb and in the cells the queen lays her eggs, and the bees store pollen and honey. The beekeeper can lift these frames out to see how the queen is laying and to see how much honey the bees are collecting and inspect for disease.
The bottom box is where the queen lives with the eggs and larvae. On top of that we have a queen excluder that the workers can fit through but not the queen as she is bigger. The boxes above this are the honey supers where the bees put all the honey.
Poll: 🤖 What skills do you think give a CV the ultimate edge in a robot-filled workplace?
The Reserve Bank has shared some pretty blunt advice: there’s no such thing as a “safe” job anymore 🛟😑
Robots are stepping into repetitive roles in factories, plants and warehouses. AI is taking care of the admin tasks that once filled many mid-level office jobs.
We want to know: As the world evolves, what skills do you think give a CV the ultimate edge in a robot-filled workplace?
Want to read more? The Press has you covered!
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52.7% Human-centred experience and communication
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14.6% Critical thinking
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30% Resilience and adaptability
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2.7% Other - I will share below!
Share your favourite main crop potato recipe and win a copy of our mag!
Love potatoes? We will give away free copies of the May 2026 issue to readers whose potato recipes are used in our magazine. To be in the running, make sure you email your family's favourite way to enjoy potatoes: mailbox@nzgardener.co.nz, by March 1, 2026.
Some Choice News!
DOC is rolling out a new tool to help figure out what to tackle first when it comes to protecting our threatened species and the things putting them at risk.
Why does this matter? As Nikki Macdonald from The Post points out, we’re a country with around 4,400 threatened species. With limited time and funding, conservation has always meant making tough calls about what gets attention first.
For the first time, DOC has put real numbers around what it would take to do everything needed to properly safeguard our unique natural environment. The new BioInvest tool shows the scale of the challenge: 310,177 actions across 28,007 sites.
Now that we can see the full picture, it brings the big question into focus: how much do we, as Kiwis, truly value protecting nature — and what are we prepared to invest to make it happen?
We hope this brings a smile!
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