Make a note of what you need to buy - the conventions are coming up.

Varroa strips should be in place by the middle of  the month, weather permitting. Check  to see what your mortality rate is and decide whether you are going to treat.  

 One of the BBC's garden programmes made a real hash of a slight story about beekeeping, talking about "honey coming from the pollen the bees bring in". Quite good shots of the bees, though I do not fancy my chances of being able to extract in the open air without attracting many bees and other insects.

It is difficult to understand why, when they take so much trouble with the programme, this particular programme ferries the presenter around the countryside in a helicopter, the makers do not bother to check the details with beekeepers, especially in this case when they had beekeepers in all their kit handling the bees.

Still I suppose to the uninitiated a helicopter is just a scaled up version of a bee, even though it uses a different fuel.

*  *

National Honey Week has come and gone, quite a lot of coverage in the Sunday specials, though much of it concerns imported honeys and some of the claimed advantages from certain monofloral honeys. I wonder whether we all ought to make more efforts to spread the news that local honeys also have their advantages, there is no doubt in my mind that many people buying local honey feel that it has a significant advantage over imported honey, though I would have great difficulty in actually defining that advantage.

National Honey Week was, I see, closely followed by National Chip Week. I really do wonder if these arbitrarily chosen weeks really do encourage people to go out and buy more of the products, or are they just milch cows for the publicity boys.

* 

 If you would like to borrow a book  please ring John Holden on 01495 311007 and he will bring it to the next meeting.  There are too many for him to bring all to every meeting.When you borrow a book you are asked for a returnable deposit of £2.00.

If there is a book that you would like to see in the library then please give the details of it to any committee member and its purchase can be discussed. Suggestions are always welcomed.

As an Association we are a member of IBRA. This means that we have access to the finest collection of bee books in the world in the Eva Crane Library, and receive their magazine ‘Bee World’ 4 times a year. A copy is circulated to members who have requested to see it and ends up in the library. If you would like to be put on the circulation list please let me know, but first have a look at a copy in the library to make sure it is your sort of thing.                                 Bridget

Swarm Liaison.

Ken has volunteered to control the swarm liaison scheme again this year. This is a way of getting rid of swarms you don’t want and may have been forced to collect    0r  Getting hold of swarms if you want to increase your stocks.

If you would like to be told about incoming swarms please register with Ken NOW on 01873 852512

Topics for Meetings.

Ken is also our Programme Secretary He would like ideas for future meetings please. Maybe there is a burning issue that you feel has been ignored or maybe you would like to hear someone again because they were so good, —— or you missed them.

Any suggestions for either people or topics will be gratefully received and considered, either by Ken or any other committee member.

Avoid going on farmland if you possibly can and if you think you must, go to check something then ask the farmer first.

Gordan Hartshorn had brought with him some old Monmouthshire BKA honey labels. Each one is numbered and they used to be acquired from County Hall. He found them in the hut of an old beekeeper who had died and thought they could be used to swell association funds.  They will be sold for 50p each at future meetings to anyone who would like one.

George Kinman and Gordan Hartshorn

On January 11th at the meeting at Goytre, George Kinman showed us a video that he had made when he attended Apimondia 1999 in Vancouver. The video was mainly about the trade stands that were all in a huge hall in the Conference Centre and varied between small stands demonstrating sachets of liquid smoke and huge stands displaying commercial equipment. George of course loves anything mechanical and is far more able to comment on and criticise these things than anyone else I know. So we were given details on, for example how the huge uncapping machines did their stuff and because George had been round some commercial beekeeping premises with his video camera, we could also see them being used ‘in real life’. There were other things like the one piece plastic frame and foundation, the spacing of a bee escape and the Killion board that were things no-one else would have thought of but George takes apart and comments on and makes us all think about again. It was a good evening and George had also brought along his version of the Thorne’s observation hive with all his improvements and his drawings. If anyone would like to make themselves an observation hive then do ask George for the details (01633 662721), he has drawings available and will help you as much as he can.

Gordan Hartshorn used to be a bee inspector and has seen an enormous number of colonies - as I suppose they all have !!! - so is able from this view point to make wonderful sweeping statements from real experience. For what it is worth (not a lot if you are already committed to something else) he says Commercial bee hives are best and top spacing is best.

Gordan thinks that nosema kills more colonies than foul brood and that we should be doing more to combat it. It’s not very difficult to check for nosema, and it is not very difficult to treat it if it is present. He also thinks that we should keep our beekeeping as simple as possible, simple queen rearing, simple swarm control and simple feeders made out of 4 pint milk cartons (remember to make the holes in one side then cover them with tape and then fill with syrup, if you try to make holes in a carton full of syrup you are asking for trouble.)

The main gist of this talk was that something has happened to our bees. There were some old photos showing bee keeping not so very long ago, with people in shirt sleeves, ladies in skirts (with handbags) and not a veil in sight. He personally obviously thinks that the import of foreign bees, even if they are good tempered at first, has led to hybridisation with our native bees and these hybrids are the ones with an unsound temperament.  So the message was to get rid of aggressive bees, try to have better and calmer bees, don’t be afraid to cull the bad queens and don’t buy imported bees.

We came through the 99/00 winter with 5 stocks in varying degrees of strength and by the beginning of May these had built up sufficiently to add supers to the strongest together with a 2nd brood chamber on the stock chosen for queen rearing.

In June we commenced our queen rearing operation and attempted to obtain larvae for grafting using the Miller method. This was not a success due mainly in part to us attempting to work rigidly to a Sunday/Sunday cycle which resulted in no larvae of suitable age being available for grafting.

A compromise was made by inserting a frame of eggs and larvae from elsewhere into the brood box containing (as we thought at the time) orphan bees. In this we must have been mistaken as although the orphans were separated from their their queen by 2 supers and 2 excluders they failed to nurture any queen cells.

So we resorted to cutting out queen cells from other colonies which were about to swarm and making up nuclei accordingly. This also was not a success. Several queens were found to be dead in their cell and any others failed to mate with the result that we entered the winter 00/01 with only three stocks, which are still alive at this time.

Honey production for the year was down to just 100lbs from 3 hives.

A group from the Midlands and South West Convention visited the apiary and ably assisted in checking the hives as part of their Saturday afternoon outing.

For various reasons only a minimum of work was carried out at the apiary last year. Saturday does not appear to be a convenient time for many people to attend so this year we will try a different time for the work days. There is still much to be done to make the facilities acceptable for our needs. A worklist will be published shortly so that anyone with a few hours to spare can assist in their own time.

Meanwhile as ever we look forward to the coming season with anticipation.

Eric     (Apiary manager)

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