Are You Doing
This?
1.
Keep
an eye on your stocks in case they need feeding (you can feed syrup now.
2.
Think
about getting foundation ready.
If
you have stored your supers with PDB crystals remember they need airing
3.
Look
under the crown boards for queen wasps and dispose of them.
4.
Clean
the floors, ideally flame them and give them back to the same colony.
Apiary
meeting
At the moment Lord Raglan has no objections to Eric going to the apiary
to tend the bees. However if you would like to go to the Sunday meetings please would you phone
Eric first to confirm that it is OK for others to go and what
precautions you need take.
01633 412617
JUST RAMBLING
In a recent
Bee Craft there was an article on the use of one of these garden
"gazebo's" as a base for a bee demonstration tent. Essentially 4 legs
with a plastic or canvas top in a flattened pyramid, and perhaps stiffened with
some guy ropes, the legs were spanned with the bee net. There are many types and
sizes available on the market, B & Q, garden centres etc, some can be
obtained with side panels.
This might be
a useful project for the Association, but a little word of warning. The one
which I have met was really more suitable for putting up in the spring and
taking down in the autumn, in other words it was a bit of a @$^*$@! to put up.
It is worth having a good look at the construction and the difficulty of
erection before purchase.
In talking
about bees to people I have found that the presence of live bees is a great
help, a frame in a glass box helps, a proper exhibition hive is better, but a
tent where one could tear a hive apart would be better still.
I wonder what
sort of reaction one would get if one wrote to a school and offered to bring
along this sort of facility with possibility of dressing the little horrors up
in bee suits and letting them get really close. A lot of work, it would need at
least three people, but could be worthwhile. Something that might interest
Janet. My choice of school would be Osbaston Primary, the head there seems keen
to bring in outside interests.
I see there is
a new book out, "Medical Aspects of Beekeeping" by Harry Riches, and
it had not unreasonable reviews, quite reasonably priced too. Might be a useful
addition to our library, many members are interested in this area.
For those
interested in pollen there is an exhibition "Harvest", at the Victoria
& Albert museum with work by Rob Kesseler with pictures of enlarged pollens
and "plates decorated with enlarged images of pollens" the pollens
being taken from the Grizedale Forest. The type and size of plates is
unspecified. At the same time he has another exhibition "digital dioramas
of images relating to Kew" whatever that means, running from 5th to 22nd
April.
I see from the
WBKA Journal that a firm is advertising an expanded metal product for use as a
varroa screen. Considerably cheaper than the epoxy coated mesh, and much more
amenable to treating with a blow lamp, though it is galvanised and the zinc
coating will burn off if too vigourously flamed. When I was working(?), it seems
many years ago, this type of material was used for guards for machines, not at
all nice to handle, many rough edges but very robust.
Might be an
idea for the Association to purchase a big sheet, though it is not easy to cut
up unless you have the right equipment.
Dick Sadler,
2/4/01,
Comment
This
is a busy time for bee keepers, viz that first inspection and looking for
disease, cleaning floor boards, varroa treatment if necessary, getting the first
supers on,( not forgetting the queen excluders), inspecting the brood frames to
see which can be discarded and replaced by nice clean foundation (the experts
suggest replace two or three every year) and you really REALLY should mark your
queen. It (allegedly) is easy to find her now when there are not too many flying
bees around so this is the best time to do it. There is an official colour for
marking each year, and this year the colour is white (by the way the colour is
always reflected in the colour of the association programme of events). This is
fortunate as I always use white - it’s called Tippex. Do practice on a few
drones before you try the queen, you only want a very small splodge discreetly
placed on the thorax away from any wings or legs. They will then totally confuse
you when you come to look for the queen and you find all those marked drones -
you can tell drones from queen as they don’t have red legs.
If
your bees are on inaccessible farmland then I’m afraid you will have to be
patient and leave them to their own devices for a while. I can remember having
my bees destroyed by fire due to AFB a few years ago and how distressing it was.
Pity the farmer. I have printed the BBKA advice to beekeepers for the current
disaster and hope you will abide with it. We hope that the apiary meetings will
be able to go ahead but I will let you know. For this month please phone Eric
before you go.
Bridget
Veils needing
repair?
I have been
supplied with the telephone number for the Gammons by Malcolm Salter who was
also at Hartpury.
It is 01823
270465.
There
are various suppliers who offer varroa treatment strips at very good prices for
bulk buying. I am reluctant to clog the newsletter up with any more
advertisements, even if they are wanting to be advertised, but if you feel you
would like to buy in bulk, or if you get together with several friends to do it,
Janet can give you the deails of the suppliers.
01291
690331
Messengers
of the Gods
This was the title of Len Dixon’s talk to the association
last month. He admitted that his beekeeping
began when an interest in local history led him to the wax chandlers livery hall
on an open day. As his interest is history he whizzed through the history of
beekeeping from ancient wall paintings showing honey gathering in Spain in 6000
BC to modern honey hunting in Nepal, using very similar techniques. The
“domestication” of bees, meaning bee keeping rather than honey gathering was
possibly begun in Egypt where it is depicted as ‘Food of the Gods’ and it
was already going on in Greece in 750 BC. Honey is mentioned many times in the
bible and in mythology but it was not until the bee space was discovered that
modern hives with seperate honey storing areas came into practice and stopped
the unnecessary destruction of colonies in order to harvest the honey.
He told a lovely story:
“.... the bees wanted a silver hive and their sting to be
fatal so that they would be respected. But God was wrath and said that they
should live in houses made of straw or osier covered in dung and they would
themselves die when they stung”. Which brought us neatly to old beekeeping in
Herefordshire where there can still be found wicker hives of woven willow
covered with dung. Then we were shown some marvellous slides made from a slide
show of “Mr Meenham”, the Herefordshire bee man, who travelled around in a
horse drawn wagon, stopping in the villages to show his slides to educate the
people about bees. This was between
1900-1910.
It was an interesting talk and a very pleasant evening .
Bridget
Twenty
plus people, including three studying the basic beekeeping course, attended the
talk at Goytre Village Hall on Thursday where Len Dixon gave a talk with the
enigmatic title ‘ Messengers of the Gods’. Bees developed in conjunction
with flowering plants about 50 million years ago, and specimens found in amber
confirm that there has been little change to the bees we have today. Spanish
cave paintings from 6000BC show people climbing cliffs to collect honey. Also in
India there are pictures from 5000BC showing the collection of honey. This
association of man with bees has led to bees being associated with the gods. You
may remember that the Greek gods drank nectar. Honey was very highly prized as
was beeswax. In Egypt honey was used in embalming. and a bee is a sign of the pharaohs. In Christianity there has been an association with the bee. For
example, Moses led his people to the land of milk and honey and when John the
Baptist was in the desert he lived on honey and locusts. The monks kept bees to
provide beeswax to make candles for the church. The Roman Church looked at bees
as an example of godliness, and talked of the ‘purity of wax’. There is also
the association of monks with mead, and the word honeymoon comes from eating
honey for a month after being married. This applied to the rich only of course.
There was a move from
honey hunting, although this is still done in some parts of the world, to
keeping bees in straw baskets called skeps. The doomsday book recorded skeps and
at that time the Mead brewer had special protection.
Myth has played an
important role in folklore. One Welsh myth said that bees announced the coming
of St. David before he was born. Even now, if there is a death in the family
someone has to go and tell the bees. Bees have been called the winged messengers
of the gods, letting them know what is happening on earth.
Even now people feel
that there is a mystique with bees and the products they produce. Even now honey
is being used in the University of Wales Hospital to successfully treat skin
conditions such as ulcers where other therapies have failed. Propolis, the glue
that bees produce, has antiseptic properties, and beeswax is used in face
creams. Royal jelly is supposed to have beneficial properties, and bee stings
have been used to treat arthritis.
So you can see that the
association of man with bees has been going on for at least 8000 years and will
no doubt continue long into the future.
If you have an interest
in this aspect of bees then the book ‘The Sacred Bee’ by Ransome can be
bought from Northern Bee Books tel: 01422 882751, Tell them you learned about it
from
http://www.gbka.org.uk
Honey and Orange
Loaf
2oz margarine
10oz local honey
9oz SR flour
1oz mixed peel
1 egg
pinch of salt
Grated rind of half a large
orange
Juice of one large orange
Grease & line a 1lb loaf
tin.
Cream the honey and
margarine well.
Add beaten egg and grated
rind.
Sift flour and salt and add
them alternately with the orange juice.
Add mixed peel.
Put in the greased &
lined tin and bake at gas mark 3 325oF
for 1 - 1 ¼ hours.
The ungrated peel of the
orange can be used too in the cake.
Remove the pith from the
peel & cut peel into small pieces.
Place in a small saucepan
and just cover with water.
Add 1 tbs. of sugar or
honey.
Boil until the peel is soft.
Graham
A Little Jolly To Buckfast
Arrive Buckfast at 12.00. Get off coach. Go for a wee. Wash
hands. Go to the restaurant for dinner. Look around abbey gardens and church.
Meet Brother Daniel Smyth for tour of the beekeeping facilities.
The tour is in two halves. Firstly to the home apiary for
an open hive demo from Peter Donovan who was Brother Adams assistant for over 60
years. The bees will be so quiet that we won't need veils. This is followed by a
look inside the bee house where there are some interesting bits and bobs along
with a lot of history about the breeding of the Buckfast bee.
The second part of the tour is to the honey house again
with lots of history.
The tour ends at 4.00 with time to look around the abbey
shop, monastic produce shop and book shop before leaving at about 5.00.
The sun will shine
all day and the air will be filled with laughter.
There is no cost for the tour but we will be asked for a
donation.
I need to know names
ASAP so I can arrange transport.
David Johns 01873
832232
Message
from BBKA:
Foot and Mouth Disease
With the beekeeping season
about to get under way in earnest and the current problem of Foot and Mouth
disease, beekeepers who have apiaries on farms have been ringing the NBC seeking
advice. BBKA's advice is as follows:‑
1. Do not go onto farm land without first seeking permission from the
farmer
2. Follow to the letter, any precautions the farmer requests
3. Offer, or be prepared for the farmer, to spray the vehicle and/or
trailer tyres with a MAFF recommended disinfectant
4. Carry a container and stiff brush to scrub footwear prior to and on
leaving the farm, with a recommended disinfectant
5. Do not park or drive on grass
6. Ensure that vour bee suit is laundered before and after each visit
Obviously the situation will
vary from county to county but we owe it to the farmers who allow us on their
land, to take all necessary safety precautions and to respect their decisions.
List of approved disinfectants and latest information available from the MAFF
website
Peter Spencer
http://www.bbka.org.uk/foot-and-mouth.htm
3/30/0
General
Secretarv
Charity Number : 1014600
