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There is a legal requirement to register your hive, for a small fee, and there are a couple of things to watch out for: varroa mite and American foul brood (AFB). Varroa needs hitting a couple of times a season or you won’t have a hive before very long. AFB requires yearly inspections by a qualified person — you can do a course yourself.

There is also colony collapse disorder (CCD), which may be wiping out about 10 per cent of New Zealand hives each year. Links have been suggested between CCD and an agricultural spray component that may knock out their homing capability; collapsed hives are empty except for the queen and a few juveniles. Hives do best in a sunny, sheltered spot, and entrance holes should be small enough to defend.

There are some moral issues to consider. Honeybees were introduced into New Zealand, as were bumblebees. Besides those two there are 32 species of native bee, and a host of other pollinators.

None of the latter needs hives and none of them has been weakened by human theft — they don’t have the honey we steal. Just how many of the native bees and other pollinators have been displaced by commercial hives, though, and how much biodiverse acreage has succumbed to mono-cropping are questions with no good answers.

It was easy for us to decide not to extract the honey — it’s the bees’ winter food — but not so easy to be sure we were doing the right thing in keeping bees at all. On one hand there is concern at plummeting global bee numbers. On the other, New Zealand has more hives per square metre than any other nation — the only greater density is achieved artificially once a year among the almond orchards of California — and there are all those others that were here first. We’ll keep ours because we like them and because we have more than enough mixed growth to host a dozen hives.

We might start a conversation with our neighbours about planting bee corridors, past non-flowering paddocks to connect up with other bee-food areas. We also like the fact that we’re helping pollination along.

I’ve learned that top-bar hives are fine for non-commercial or one-offs, and that they better emulate a naturally hanging hive. I’ve learned that traditional boxes stack and travel better. I’ve learned that bees don’t like cold, so before winter I’m going to build an insulated lid, mount the hive a little further off the ground, and shroud it from the cold downhill (katabatic) evening air.

If nothing else, this experience has made us appreciate the amazing bee work that went into the honey we spread so casually on our toast. Beehive building would be a great community fundraiser or local production-run project — dare I suggest a working bee? — besides being fun as a one-off.

Plans are available as free downloads, well within sheddie range, and there are plenty of enthusiasts happy to mentor beginners.