After getting through fewer bee deaths from the varroa mite, he began noticing his queens were perishing in hives.
Queen bees have a vital role in sustaining hives, from laying eggs to produce enough offspring for colony growth to maintaining hive order.
The Hantz family has about 5000 hives producing mainly clover honey as well as providing hives for pollinating radish and carrot seed crops and blackcurrant operations.
Their beehives are based north of Ashburton to Christchurch with a few in the Rakaia and Methven area.
Mr Hantz said last season’s honey production was well below average, which meant a barely break-even result.
He said Hantz Honey averaged 20kg of honey when it usually harvested 30kg; and in good seasons that figure could be close to 40kg.
"It was probably one of the worst years we have had in 10 years, especially for honey production. Pollination requirements were certainly up, but to make the business viable we need them to go hand in hand and still need a good honey crop to pay the bills."
The season was shaping up to be good for clover flow after a hot and dry spell and then perfectly timed rain arrived just before Christmas.
Three weeks of much-needed warm weather never arrived. The clover failed to fully flower as rain and a run of cold easterly winds settled in.
While hives had a better result in Ellesmere as the bees were able to get out for three hours of the day, those at Ashburton and Methven came under more rain.
Mr Hantz said they were hoping for a better result this season.
"As the old man would always say, we are always one year closer to the good one. I guess the disappointing thing for us was there was so much seed clover around too and there was the potential to get a good honey crop, but the weather just didn’t play ball in the end and we didn’t get the cherry on the top."
The bees reacted to four seasons in one day with late swarms running into February and confused queens came close to shutting down egg laying.
The Hantz team has gone through the first run of monitoring hives to find bee health was down over winter.
Mr Hantz said they had 20% losses from the varroa mite at the same time last season and had worked hard to treat hives, but were "blind-sided" by similar death rates.
"This year we’ve had losses through poor queen matings and we are putting that down to the weather we had in the summer and autumn. We had queens that were mated then, but they are just starting to break down now and die. So if it’s not one thing it’s another."
Death rates have been rising from varroa infections, higher than 30% in the North Island.
Varroa treatment costs are about $40 per hive, including labour costs. The Hantz family now does this year round.
They breed their own queens as well as bringing them in and are trying to expand the queen-rearing operation.
Mr Hantz said spring production had started. Bees were collecting nectar from willow trees as the feed source was the first to flower.
"It’s crucial we get a good spring and the bees can get a good pollen and nectar source to build up themselves and potentially we will go around and split them in half to make our numbers up."
Beekeepers would be hoping for less rain and ideally hot and dry weather to get the growing until it was ready to flower.
