GBKA Registered 
Charity Number : 1014600
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GBKA Registered
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Please note the
times and days of the apiary meetings. We want to have
these meetings at a time that is convenient for as many members of the
association as possible. This year we
are trying a variety of times and days. Please come
when you can. If you have a particular preference please LET US KNOW. Several
people have expressed an interest in taking this exam. The
syllabus is on the BBKA website. Pam
has agreed to be the examiner and June 18th has been suggested as a possible
day. It
costs £10 If
you would like an entry form please phone Janet. 01291 690331 Make
sure the bees have enough space. It is better to add supers early than late at
this time of year. Start
to concentrate on swarm prevention procedures, if all else fails you will have
to do swarm control. Make sure you have a method worked out and adequate spare
boxes ready. Make
sure you have spare frames with foundation to house any swarms you may be called
upon to collect. Remove any rape honey as soon as the supers are full. Health warning John Holden reports that there are a number of outbreaks of foulbrood around so be careful with your hygiene and keep your eyes open. Swarm liaison Ken Key has agreed to organise the swarm liaison again this year. So: 1) If you are prepared to collect swarms: Leave your phone number with Ken so that he can alert you if he hears of one in your vicinity. 2) If you have a swarm that you do not require tell Ken about it and he can arrange for someone to come and get it. Ken Key 01873 852512 I think everyone must
have left Cwmbran on the IPM day determined to have a go at one of the methods
described. Luckily I had thought ahead and had been monitoring mite fall over
the preceding week. Imagine my disappointment at finding so few mites that there
is no call for any action. Too bad, I shall have lost the initiative when it
becomes imperative. Two things have struck me. One is how important it is to
monitor, there is no point ‘managing’ unless it is necessary. The other is
the difficulty of counting the fallen mites. Do we all manage to see most of the
mites there. Do we perhaps see only half of them, we could easily miss the ones
that are lying on their backs. Has the calculation taken that into account, or
should we multiply the number we see by a number that reflects our confidence in
our ability to detect the presence of mites that are not chestnut brown blobs
lying the right way up. For many years now we
have recorded rainfall and max and min temperatures in our garden. Last month
(April) was fairly standard for rainfall and the temperature range has been very
similar to last year, slightly cooler maximums but no huge swings of hot and
cold . If you remember we had a wonderful hawthorn flow last year in the second
half of May and fantastic swarms. Let’s hope we have the hawthorn again.
Perhaps we could forego the swarming. The opening of our first rape fields was
about a week later than last year. I keep being exhorted to join “Buglife”, the first organisation in Europe committed to the conservation of all invertebrates. Does anyone know anything about them? One of the worldwide facts that they give as a reason for joining is “If it were not for bees, it has been estimated that we would lose over 100,000 species of plant life.” Bridget If you missed the Welsh convention and now you have missed Stoneleigh
don’t despair everything you need for beekeeping can be bought from the suppliers who
are advertised in the newsletter every month on page 2. Claire Waring has resigned as the General Secretary. This post is now
being advertised. Claire seems to have been involved in every facet of beekeeping, one wonders where she found the time and energy. She is the editor of Beecraft (I would have thought that would be enough to keep anyone busy). We wish her well in all her future endeavours. Twenty years ago, the possibility that 120 beekeepers
would spend a sunny Saturday packed into a theatre in Cwmbran to learn about
integrated pest management (IPM) would have been unthinkable. On Saturday, April
9 it actually happened. To understand what brought this about, it is necessary
to turn the clock back to 1992, when Varroa destructor (incorrectly referred to as V jacobsonii at the time) made its first appearance in British
beehives. The natural spread of this tiny parasite, aided and abetted by
beekeepers moving infected colonies around the country, has resulted in a
situation where no beekeeper in the UK can ignore the threat posed by a heavy
Varroa infestation. In this country, we were actually very fortunate.
Varroa was well known to other European beekeepers long before it got to us and
it had thus been established that pyrethroid treatment could be devastatingly
effective against the parasite. The introduction of commercial preparations
(such as Bayvarol and Apistan) meant that the majority of beekeepers could keep
their colonies alive by a relatively simple annual treatment. While this
treatment involved extra work and extra expense for the beekeeper, it
nevertheless provided the magic bullet that guaranteed colony survival from one
season to the next. The discovery of pyrethroid resistant mites in the
south west of England was alarming but hardly surprising. By a process of
natural selection, analogous to that seen in the evolution of drug resistant
bacteria, exposure of Varroa to pyrethroids has selected those mites with the
greatest resistance to the drug and these are the ones that are now reproducing
effectively in many parts of the UK. There is little doubt that the selection
process has been accelerated by beekeepers who have attempted to improve the
efficacy of the drug by extending pyrethroid treatment beyond the prescribed 6
week period. Others may have produced the same result through ignorance of the
importance of protocol or sheer forgetfulness. However, regardless of the
process, we now face a situation where we can no longer rely on a magic bullet. Happily, the IPM day at Cwmbran was not one of total
gloom considering the serious nature of the problem it addressed. The speakers,
Mike Brown (from the NBU) and Richard Ball (from a region severely affected by
pyrethroid resistant Varroa), set a professional tone from the outset. The facts
were presented and the alternatives to pyrethroid treatment were discussed in an
objective and informative manner. John Verran demonstrated the Beltsville Test
live on stage. The centrepiece was a group of workshops on alternatives to drugs
run by John Verran, Pam Gregory, John Holden and George Kinman. These experts
are to be congratulated for their stamina as each workshop was presented four
times in order to cope with the number of attendees. John Verran described the use of drone brood to
selectively deplete the Varroa population. In some studies, it has been claimed
that up to 90% of mites can be enticed into drone brood and thus effectively
removed from the colony. It would be interesting to know the nature of this
attraction as it could conceivably provide the Pied Piper capable of luring
mites to an untimely end. Pam Gregory explained the use of queen trapping as a
means of controlling the site of laying for a period of four weeks so that all
consecutive brood can be removed. This approach requires both the skill to find
the queen and the confidence needed to handle her without causing injury.
Moreover, the loss of brood at a critical laying period will inevitably reduce
the honey harvest in that season. John Holden described the use of a shook swarm
to remove bees from infected brood. While already known as a treatment for EFB,
this method has the advantage that it does not rely on finding the queen at the
outset. Nevertheless, the procedure is not without risk since it is calculated
that around 7% of shook swarms fail as a consequence of damage to the queen or
loss through absconding. The latter can be minimised by remembering to place a
queen excluder underneath the brood box prior to shaking the bees inside. The
fourth presentation was by George Kinman who explained the importance of open
mesh floors for controlling and monitoring Varroa and also described a simple
method for making one’s own mesh floors. After a further presentation by James Morton of the NBU
on the chemical alternatives (formic acid, oxalic acid and thymol) and their
respective merits and drawbacks (such as toxicity towards the beekeeper and
absence of registration in this country), we were treated to the Max Watkins
marketing road show on behalf of Vita and Apiguard. In response to a subsequent
question he claimed that it was unlikely that Varroa would develop resistance to
thymol as it had to pyrethroids. Encouraging as this might be, I suspect his
answer was based on optimism rather than scientific evidence. Time will tell. The day was memorable for several reasons. Firstly, the
message was loud and clear. Varroa that are resistant to pyrethroids pose an
increasing threat to beekeeping. Those who continue to get by on a single annual
treatment with Bayvarol or Apistan cannot afford to be complacent, since
resistance to these drugs is always likely to appear. Secondly, it is important
to consider alternative therapies before being forced into this situation by the
loss of pyrethroid efficacy. Thirdly, it was made clear that several methods of
control can be effective in reducing mite populations. It is foolish to think
that Varroa can be eradicated. On the other hand, a low level of parasitic
infestation can be tolerated by bee colonies. Therefore, by far the most
important thing that the beekeeper can do is to make use of mite drop to
determine infestation levels and so decide when intervention is required. It is
no use waiting until the colony starts to look sick before contemplating action,
as it is then too late. In order to facilitate monitoring, colonies must be
maintained on open floors and examined regularly. A range of treatments is
available and it is critical that these are undertaken at the appropriate time
and that it is then demonstrated, through further monitoring, that they have
been effective. It may seem like hard work but it is likely that without it,
hobby beekeeping will become a thing of the past. Judging by the number and quality of questions asked by
delegates and the wide ranging discussions that took place at lunch time and
continued on after the final presentation, this meeting filled a great need. The
general mood was of concern tempered with optimism. There is a need for
Associations to provide their members with information and support. Members
themselves can help by rigorous monitoring and communicating their successes and
failures to colleagues. We are very grateful to all those who devoted so much
time and effort to making IPM Cwmbran an undoubted success. For our bees, it
might prove the difference between life and death. Rattus What shall I put in my smoker? The Puffball (taken
from Curiosities of Beekeeping by L.R.Croft) The Rev. W.C.Cotton (born1814) founded while a student at Oxford, the “Oxford Apiarian Society.” This was an attempt to save the lives of bees that might otherwise have been killed by sulphuring. To achieve this end, Cotton advocated the use of the puffball fungus to stupefy the bees when taking the honey harvest. He wrote:- The fungus does them no harm: It makes them drunk, which is good for the bees, though bad for men, as they get well in 20 minutes and are all the merrier afterwards. The BBJ of November 1942 informs us that the use of the puffball (Galvatia gigantia) was still in use in West Sussex and that beekeepers in the Godalming district occasionally employ smouldering Polyporus betulinus and Doedolea quercina to anaesthetize bee colonies. The same journal informed its readers in July 1949 that beekeepers on the Yorkshire moors still use the puffball, however many of them are very secretive about it. In more recent times a firm in Timaru, New Zealand , is reported to use the puffball to anaesthetize bees during queen rearing. In a study of anaesthesia of honeybees by smoke from puffballs, W.F.Woods reporting in J.Api. Res., (1983) found that the smoke from burning human hair had a similar effect to that produced by the puffball. This he attributed to the presence of hydrogen sulphide in the smoke. The Rev. John Thorley 1671-1759 (extract from Great Masters of Beekeeping by Ron Brown) …..”His secret was the use of smoke from a dried fungus, used as a narcotic to calm, and even anaesthetize a hive of bees. Variously called ‘frog cheese’, ‘pug foist,’ ‘puck,’ or just ‘giant fungus’ (today more commonly called ‘puff-ball), he describes how he obtained them (as large as a man’s head sometimes) from shepherds and farm workers. When fresh they could be sliced and cooked something like mushooms but on drying in summer or in a slow oven the fungus went brown and finally consisted of a fine powder in a tough outer skin. He describes taking a piece the size of a hen’s egg on a stick and holding it smouldering slowly under a skep of bees so that the smoke and fumes went up into the colony (no purpose made smoker in those days). In a minute the bees would drop off the comb like hail, into an empty skep, and wake up apparently none the worse an hour or two later. He used this technique to harvest honeycombs from skeps and box hives (instead of killing the bees with sulphur), and to unite two or three stocks with no fighting. He would also examine the bees, identify the queen (usually the last to fall down), even count and weigh them to arrive at the number in a swarm or weighing one pound. An illustration in his book shows him seated at the study table making a detailed examination of a number of anaesthetized bees. (Some years ago I found two or three of these fungi, the size of a mans head, dried them all summer in the greenhouse and successfully used a small piece of the brown matter wrapped in hessian in my smoker, to control the occasional colony of very aggressive bees. I have hesitated to speak much about this, for fear that young people might wish to experiment with it, as a narcotic drug, on themselves).” Editor’s comment. I
have asked a learned mycologist about the dangers regarding puffballs and I was
looked at in amazement. It is not likely to be effective on humans—we don’t
really know how or why it works on bees but if Ron Brown says it works on very
aggressive bees it might be worth drying some to have in an emergency, just in
case one should come across a nasty colony on a bad day. |
Whilst the domains gbka.co.uk & gbka .org .uk are owned by G Cole. The web pages under these domains are published for the Gwent Beekeepers association and its members , in order to publicise our association's news, aims, activities, and the art of beekeeping.
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