GBKA Registered 
Charity Number : 1014600
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GBKA Registered
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I
still have some of the new DEFRA leaflets on how to manage varroa. They
are packed with information and will be particularly useful in pyrethroid
resistant management. I
shall bring them to the next meeting, if you would like a copy but can’t get
to the meeting please ask a friend to pick one up for you or as a last resort I
will post one, but they are rather heavy. Bridget This
month you can start to get your supers ready and make sure your queen excluders
are clean and ready to put on. Keep
an eye on the level of food in the colony. Offer
any help you can at the apiary. This
convention happens every year in September in one of a number of participating
counties. Our next turn will be in 2008. If you have ever been to one of these
conventions you will know what fun they are. Would anyone be prepared to take
on—or help with – the organisation of the next one? The committee are still
exhausted from organising the last one, there is plenty of experience but not
enough enthusiasm. Talk about it with any of the committee. The
National Honey Show Ltd. is offering reduced price membership in an effort to
drum up some support. They will sell membership of NHS to BKAs for £8 which the
BKAs can sell on to their members for £9. As a member of the NHS you can get
into the Honey Show free.
If you would like to take advantage of this offer please phone Janet on
01291 690331. Carrying on from my remarks of last month; I decided to
go ahead with the oxalic acid treatment. I had to go into one hive to remove a
mouse nest, and another one needed a new floor, so I thought while I was
disturbing them I might as well do the treatment at the same time. This was of
course before Chris Deaves expounded on stress, so maybe I should NOT have done
two manipulations simultaneously. I used the ‘trickling oxalic acid’ method
given by Richard Ball in the BBKA newsletter number 155 (October 2005). In fact
I found that o.a. is not very soluble, so I dissolved it in water first with a
bit of heat and then made it up to the correct strength with double strength
sugar syrup. But that is a matter of individual fiddling, as long as you end up
with the correct concentration of acid. The results were exceedingly interesting. According to
my initial natural mortality drop the number of mites in one of my colonies was
2000, the others were all well under 1000 and not considered significant. I
counted the mite drop every 24 hours for 8
days after the application. After 48 hours the number of dead mites was over
1000 in one colony which had had only three natural dead over 8 days. From the
colony with the original high count I counted almost 2000 mites over 2 weeks.
(Have I killed them all I wonder). In the new DEFRA leaflet we are advised to keep the
mite population in a colony below 1000. If you start the season with a
population of 200 mites, by day 80 you will have reached this level (earlier if
you have invasion from another collapsing colony). You will then need to take
some sort of action (at the start of the main flow). If, at this point, you
apply a varroacide which is 99% effective you’ll be all right for the rest of
the season. If it is only 80% effective you will need to treat again in 80 days.
Oxalic acid is considered to be 90% effective in broodless colonies. I doubt
very much that my colonies were totally broodless, but I still killed an
alarming number of mites, especially in the ones that did not officially need
action to be taken. My point is twofold. Although I am a dedicated monitor
of natural mortality, it is not always reliable. It did show me the colony with
the heaviest infection, but it did not alert me to the state of one with over
1500 mites. Also, the treatment was simple to apply, has not (yet at any rate)
killed the bees, and could be performed on a shook swarm or any other swarm. Another thing. The mites that dropped were HUGE. We
could count them without our spectacles, forget about the magnifying glass.
These were healthy active beasts, quite unlike the dead jobs we usually have to
count. I am not the only one to use oxalic acid. Reg Griffiths
has done so with an interesting method of application. Ask him about it.
Bridget The
February meeting fielded a good turnout of members to welcome Chris Deaves,our
BBKA liaison officer, who spoke about the impact of stress on bee health and
honey production. He made the point at the outset that his talk would be thought
provoking rather than packed with scientific observation and this was how it
turned out. It is common practice these days to ascribe life’s problems to
stress and it is sometimes tempting to extrapolate this human experience to our
bees. Chris proposed that stress in humans is a condition commonly associated
with the workplace, where the needs and expectations of management are difficult
or impossible to achieve. Though it is difficult to imagine a parallel situation
relating to bees, there are several situations where bees are subjected to
stresses that can affect their health and productivity. Environmental
stress is one with which we can readily associate. Cold, wet summers provide far
from ideal conditions for nectar collection and may place a colony at risk the
following winter, particularly if that is a severe one. Of course, the
beekeeper’s awareness of such problems can mitigate their impact. We are all
aware of the devastating effect that disease can have on our bees. The presence
of Varroa and its hitch-hiking viruses in a colony is a permanent threat to
productivity and even survival. Here again, sympathetic intervention by the
beekeeper can save the day. Ironically,
it is often the beekeeper that provides the source of stress. I cannot think of
a human equivalent of a shook swarm but it strikes me that it must be a pretty
unnerving experience for the average honey bee. It is possible that repeated
intervention, though well meaning, will have a negative effect on the wellbeing
of a colony and so we should think carefully about how we treat our bees rather
than assume that they can cope with whatever we subject them to. Chris
finished his talk with reference to the importance of genetic composition in
determining behaviour. For example, he cited work which claimed that the bees in
a swarm were more likely to originate from eggs fertilised by the same sperm.
The impact of genetic heterogeneity within the colony could provide some
fascinating research for eager investigators. It is of course the genetic
variability that has enabled Apis mellifera to adapt to such a wide range
of climates and habitats. As Darwin perceived, it is stress that provides the
driving force for evolution and the continued emergence of new species. The fact
that bees are still around after 80 million years, suggests that they are pretty
good at handling stress. Let’s help them to keep it that way. Rattus Please
note that the BBKA website username has changed. It is now ‘honeybee.’ Ivor
Davis, who was Chairman of BBKA is now the President, on the retirement of Glyn
Davies. The new Chairman is Tim Lovett. DEFRA
is proposing new legislation concerning the control of bee diseases. It is
detailed on their website or you can read a synopsis by Ivor Davis in last
month’s BBKA newsletter. If you have any comments let someone on the committee
know before the BDI AGM which happens on the day after Stoneleigh (the BBKA
convention April 22nd.) It might affect bee insurance. Comments on the draft
contingency plan must be in before
12th May. Look on the website, www.defra.gov.uk, and you can read all 61 pages
of it. John
bought some very reasonably priced fondant for the association apiary
from BAKO Try phoning their sales dept. 01792 890500. The
apiary work party was a great success and the site is looking a lot tidier. Please
consider being a mentor to help beginners. We have been running the beginners
course for six years now, and feedback tells us that they would like to have a
nominated helper on whom they can call when they are worried about practical
things but don’t like to keep bothering John. The ‘rules’ of mentoring are
set out below as they have envisaged by David Johns. If there is something there
that bothers you it can be altered but it gives the general idea of what is
expected. It
is important that everyone, both mentors and beginners are clear what their
roles are. The thinking behind the mentoring scheme is to provide support and
encouragement to new association members
starting out in beekeeping. There is a vast amount of knowledge and experience
in our association which should be made available to the beginners. As a result
of this support it is hoped to increase participation in the association
activities and further promote the craft. What form can the mentoring take?
Be prepared to answer telephone enquiries.
Ring to remind beginners of meetings both apiary and winter meetings.
Introduce beginners to others at the meetings.
When going to visit own bees invite them along.
Beginners will be allocated mentors with due regard to geographical
location and time available.
Mentors are not expected to drop everything and dash
to see the beginner’s bees. If the mentor offers
to visit the beginner’s apiary to help, then that is between them and
is outside the formal mentoring
provision.
Formal mentoring to last one year only. We would
like to compile a list of people prepared to be mentors and then allocate them
with regard to geographical location as they become necessary. Please
let John Holden know if you would be prepared to be a mentor. |
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