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Are you doing this ?
Heft
your hives to check the feed. If they feel too light and you haven’t any candy
put on a bag of sugar. If
you want to creosote your hives and it is dry and frosty the bees won’t mind. Look out extra floors so that you have them ready to put on, clean, fresh and flamed to get rid of the winter dampness. Beginners CourseThere
has been a good response to our beginners course. If
you are one of them, or if you are one of the shadow teachers requiring
training, then the first meeting is
at Usk on Feb. 27th at 7.00 Thank
you to everyone who found somewhere to display the poster. National CoursesGreetings
All BBKA
mentioned their syllabus developed to help area associations
run introductory courses in their last Newsletter. A
training weekend to develop the skills necessary to lead such courses with the
aim of encouraging new beekeepers has been arranged. The
course commences at 12 noon on Sat 10th Feb 2001 with a buffet lunch and
concludes on Sun 11th Feb at 13.00hrs. Places
on the course will be limited to 40 and bookings may be residential - cost £50.00
or non residential - cost £5.00. Book
early - places are limited. By Jan
22nd or as soon as possible. Bookings
to the General Secretary, The National Beekeeping Centre, National
Agricultural Centre, Stoneleigh CV8
2LG Cheques
to BBKA Happy
New Year Honey TestingDr. Rose Cooper is a lecturer in microbiology at
UWIC. She also carries out research into the wound healing properties of honey
and recently some of us heard her address IBRA at their AGM on this topic. As a
result Janet has been in touch with her and discovered that she would like
samples from all over Wales to screen for their anti-bacterial action. This is
in response to the latest excitement that has been caused over the
anti-bacterial action of new Zealand Manuka honey and should not be confused
with the other properties of honey that assist in wound healing. These will be
the subject of a further research project. I now have some sterile plastic pots
in which the sample can be placed, jiffy-bags to send them in, and explanatory
letters. It is important for the study that the location of the apiary from
which the honey came is known, this can be written on the pot. It has also been
noticed that some beekeepers are shy about divulging their names, so every GBKA
member is going to be given a reference number which you can use on the pot if
you would rather. The pots will be brought to the next 2 or 3 Goytre meetings
for anyone to take if they would like to find out if their honey has
anti-bacterial activity. If you cannot get to the meetings I have a convenient
post box outside my house from which they can be collected, even if I am not in,
if you let me know when you want them. Bridget
Great
Witley Branch. County AGM at Great Witley on 7tb April 2000 The Speaker will be
Dr. Francis Ratnieks. Dr.
Ratnieks is the Director of the Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects at
Sheffield University and an internationally famous bee scientist and an
excellent speaker. The
Millennium Award (1999) from the Royal Society and Royal
Institution "Bringing bee biology and behaviour to beekeepers and the
public" The
Educational Video Award (1997) (New York Educational Video Competition)
"Dancing for their supper: the dance language and foraging ecology of the
honey bee". He
has published over 90 scientific articles published and more than 60 in refereed
journals and books. He is a very experienced beekeeper with bees in England, the
USA and Mexico. Besides his own extensive research he leads a distinguished
group of 6 postdoctorates in bee and insect research in Sheffield. Stephen
Martin has recently joined this department. With prior permission Worcestershire
beekeepers will be welcome to visit to the laboratory to see some of the work. Dr.
Francis Ratnieks will give two talks, the first on the research work going on in
his laboratory on Bee Research at Sheffield University. In the second he will
explain how his life's work with the honey bee has influenced his own thinking
about human life. This
is a speaker you will not want to miss!!!
David Blakeway Smith, (Hon Sec) Comment
I
hope you all had a very happy Christmastime and will have an exceptionally
productive year. I was being told today about someone who had a limited amount
of honey so increased his price to £3.75 and sold the lot in record time. I
just tell you that as something to think about. Thank
you to all those who have paid their subscriptions. There will be some receipts
in with this newsletter, but don’t worry if yours is not there. It will be
included next month. There
is a problem that I suppose I could have foreseen about missing a month of
‘letter’. There seems to be so much to put in that I am limited to this tiny
space in a corner. I have had an exciting response to my request for help with a
web site so watch out for it. It will need helpful criticism and input during
the initial ‘setting-up’ process. I’m sure I can rely on you. Robert
Pickard says that if bees need feeding in the winter it shows bad feeding in the
autumn - but better to accept you are a bad feeder than lose your bees. What is the countryside for ? This all started
with a chance rather casual remark to Janet Bromley, which stuck in my mind,
firstly because it was rather ill considered at the time and secondly because
the Countryside is something that we all take very much for granted. As
Beekeepers we perhaps are looking for much diversity with an abundance of plants
that will supply the pollen and nectar. But we also look for other things,
water, shelter, even trees to make our hives, and perhaps paths and roads to
access our colonies, not to mention houses to live in and towns and villages to
provide employment. All are interconnected in some way. Farming is
perhaps the most obvious use of the countryside, now becoming ever more
specialised, but there are even many varieties of that, ranging from upland hill
grazing through the more mixed lowland farms to the specialised market gardening
of say the Evesham Vale. Where do we fit in the intensive stock rearing, be it
cattle, sheep, or chickens in their often ugly sheds and pens, are they farming
or industrial food production? There are the farm diversifications, special
breeds, horse rearing and training, one thinks of places like Newmarket, and the
farming colleges, Usk, and their lesser relations the open farms to show
children something of farming. Then there are
the leisure activities, an area that is growing rapidly at the present, rock
climbing, rambling in its many forms, pony trekking, sporting areas ranging from
the humble village cricket ground to the big golf complexes, such as the Celtic
Manor with its obtrusive hotel, and even the humble citizen who gets his
pleasure from growing a few flowers or vegetables on his allotment. Do we
classify the deer parks of the great landed estates and the show gardens, such
as Aberglasney as leisure activities? Many of these activities share the use of
the countryside with the farmers or the great estates. Past and
present industrial activities all appear in the Countryside. Roads and railways
are obvious examples, as are the industrial estates, East Moors in the city, and
every village and small town seems to aspire to its industrial areas. But there
are also the remains of the old industries, now often converted to tourist
traps, the Big Pit, the Brecon Canal, now almost a scenic feature in itself.
Then there are the really ancient sites, how do we classify somewhere like
Stonehenge, or the remains of the ancient tomb like the one just outside
Shirenewton, or even the great ordered piles of stones like Raglan castle, so carefully looked after by Cadw. Subsidised
activities are taking up more and more of the land. Set aside with payments to
farmers to do nothing, organisations like the Woodland Trust, the Wildlife
Trusts, and perhaps the National Trust all occupy the countryside and by some
mechanism control the use by using funds from subscriptions or from central
funds to establish a different order, often a very specialised order on parts of
the countryside. Places like Cleddon bog or the Croes Robert reserve are
"Wildlife" examples whilst the park at the back of Newton House at
Llandeilo, with its white cattle and deer park, is an example of the National
Trust imposing an order on the country side. But
what of the future? The past is indelibly stamped on the landscape. The housing
development at Parc Seymour almost exactly follows some of the boundaries of an
older deer park. The main roads, the railways and features like the Brecon
canal, features from the past, are most unlikely to be drastically re routed or
vanish. There will undoubtedly be modifications, theA40 in the Clydach gorge,
perhaps the M4 relief route, all driven by the inexorable rise in motor traffic,
both commercial and private. We must all ensure that this type of development is
sympathetically carried out. People and
industry seem most unwilling to forsake the developments on the outskirts of
small towns and villages in favour of the old sites in the towns, despite some
pressure from government. The supermarkets and DIY barns want plenty of room for
their parking and good access, not found in the inner cities. Where does
this leave the farmer? It is a sad fact that at the moment and for, I think the
foreseeable future, the great majority of our food can be produced more cheaply
outside the United Kingdom. Look at the price of imported honey, perhaps a third
the selling price of home grown. How is the farmer going to cope with the narrow
lanes and rigid stone walls when he wants to use big machinery, perhaps the only
way that he can make his hill farm pay? But the public like these walls and
lanes, they are tourist features that can be sold in glossy brochures. The
countryside in the past has always been in the process of change, and this
change still continues, perhaps at a faster rate than before. But we seem
terribly resistant to change, the field barn that is of little use to the farmer
will have the greatest difficulty in getting planning permission, and as for
digging up a hedge that is only a few hundred years old that will evoke heated
discussion at the village hall meeting. But the
countryside seems to be able to absorb change, and make the change a feature
within a comparatively short time, provided we are patient. Look at the virtual
disappearance of railway tracks, say from Monmouth to Usk, tracks that were used
in living memory. Is it not better that the change takes place so that the
countryside is used, rather than we try to freeze it in a particular shape that
appeals to our perceived view, and so condemn it to a slow death of disuse? Dick Sadler, 20/1 /01,
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