GBKA  Registered Charity Number : 1014600

  Are You Doing This?

It is getting to the time to remove the honey. 23rd August is St. Ambrose Day when traditionally the supers should be lifted.

Once the honey is removed Apistan/Bayvarol strips can be inserted.

Have mouse guards ready for use before the first cold weather

Membership matters

It has been brought to our attention that members of the association do not know who or where the other members are. In the next newsletter we intend to include a list of our current members with their addresses and tel nos. We hope this will help to strengthen the community spirit.

If you do not want any of  your details circulated please let me know NOW

                  Bridget 

Comment

It is gratifying to have any feedback from members about the way the association is being run, even critical. One can apply the old adage that actors use,’ it is better to be slated by the press than ignored’. The list of committee members on page five is so that all  other members know who they are and where they live. We would also like to supply everyone with a list of all the members of the association so that you know if you are living next door to a beekeeper and never knew it! However if anyone does not want their name , address or phone number passed on, please let me know as soon as possible.

 Some people have already removed their honey, I hope it has been a good year for all. Do you remember last year we all replaced our supers to be cleaned up and the bees refilled them? I can’t think what they can be collecting at the moment in this drought but they seem to be busy.

Take care when you come to labelling your honey for sale. There are all those new rules (well new in 2004) and the Trading Standards officers are around. The labels must describe accurately the contents of the jar. The descriptions are quite precise, the obvious one being honey with ‘certain qualifications if genuinely truthful’ (so Gwent is OK if you are sure about it, so is floral if it isn’t honeydew). You are also obliged to put the country of origin (ie UK or Wales, but you can’t rely on the fact that it is in your address), there must be a best before date and if you are selling through a third party a lot number. Your address and the weight has always been necessary. More details can be found at www.tradingstandards.gov.uk

  My apologies to those who are allergic to web addresses.                       Bridget

Hospitals report big rise in bee and wasp stings

Janet handed me a report from a newspaper with this stunning headline. The number of people admitted to hospital with wasp, bee and hornet stings was 369 in 2003/4 and 843 in 2004/5. Deaths from stings rose from 3 to 8. An expert in ‘behavioural ecology’ thinks it is due to the rise in the numbers of bumblebees shipped to Britain for use as pollinators in commercial greenhouses. He said workers in the greenhouses would be more at risk—but not that the figures confirmed it. He also said the number of stings is closely linked to hot weather. (It would be interesting to know how many of the hospitalised were suffering from hornet stings. They must be worse than bee stings.)

Wasps

Never say that wasps are a bad thing (unless they are robbing a beehive). We have just watched one catch a fly on the kitchen window sill, bite off the fly’s head, legs and wings and fly off with the rest. We are left with the debris to clear up.

However there do seem to be rather a large number of wasps around this year. Make sure your hives are all wasp tight, they can squeeze through badly fitting joints and rob out a super without having to struggle through the entrance

Jill Chirnside is in hospital for a short stay. We wish her a speedy recovery because we need her but she is not to do too much until she is completely recovered.

This photo taken at the Royal Welsh Show was in the Western Mail on 23rd July

Other views on anti-oxidants

In the BBKA newsletter that we have all just read there is an article about antioxidants from which it appears that honey is not particularly high in them. Antioxidants are the new health myth that cure everything from aging to cancer by mopping up free radicals (which are a fairly old disease scare myth which cause everything). In last week’s New Scientist we are told that naturally occurring antioxidants in fruit and vegetables (and red wine in moderation) are a good thing, but avoid high dose supplements or heavily fortified foods because they don’t work the right way and probably do more harm than good. So the fact that honey has or hasn’t high levels of antioxidants is totally irrelevant to the fact that it is a natural, balanced, healthy food.

Question and Answer Corner

Q.What does it mean if there are masses of dead bees on the ground outside the hive entrance?

John Holden replies:

There is no simple answer to this enormous question. It depends on the time of year, one would have to open the hive to find out. It could be: poisoning, starvation, disease (nosema, acarine etc.) robbing or something else altogether.

Q.What does it mean if there are bees crawling all over the outside of the hive?

John replies:

Another question with no single answer. Why are they crawling? Have they damaged wings or legs? Is it hot? Is it acarine? Have they been on rhodedendron or fermenting lime?

News of Fungal methods for destroying varroa www.Mycophile@namyco.org p16 May/June 2006 issue

NAMA (the North American Mycological Association), whose aim is “to promote, pursue and advance the science of mycology”,  has a bi-monthly newsletter called Mycophile. In the May/June 2006 issue there is an interesting article called “Honey Mushrooms and Honey Bees”. I wrote to the editor asking if I could use the article but haven’t had a response so I’ll give a brief synopsis for those of you who  don’t want to go on line and read it all. The writer went on a fungal foray with some friends who lived in the right place to look for honey mushrooms. They found some ‘velvet foot’ and went back to the friend’s house to cook them. She cooked them with venison and wrapped them in cornbread which she had made using her own honey. She bemoaned the fact that her bees were all being killed by Varroa destructor and gave them a lesson on the treatment of the disease. They first used peppermint oil and heated mite zappers, then moved on to chemical pesticides to which the mites rapidly became resistant. Now they use drone removal but a new method was being field trialled. Both Metarhizium anisopliae and Hirsutella thompsonii are lethal to mites. Metarhizium also kills termites, locusts and grasshoppers. They are members of the deuteromycetes as are Aspergillus and Penicillium. The new method uses plastic strips which are coated with dry fungal spores and inserted into the hive. The spores attach to the surface of the mite and germinate. They form a peg which pierces the cuticle and enters the body of the mite. When the mite dies the fungus covers it in a mat. In the field trials most of the mites were dead in 3-5 days. It was suggested that eventually bees might evolve which would carry spores of the fungus on their bodies  which would give them innate resistance.

I visited another website, www.mycolog.com, which is a book called ’The Fifth Kingdom’ and in chapter 14 there are pictures of different fungi being used as agents of biological control. There I found that there is a commercially available preparation of Hirsutella thompsonii called ‘Mycar’ which is described as a myco acaricide. It didn’t say which mites it has been developed to kill (I suppose chicken ones would be a commercially viable research effort) but one does feel that if the same fungus kills varroa then it can’t be that long before there is something we can use on the market.                                   Bridget

Apiary Tea Party – July 16

It wasn’t the hottest day of our record-breaking July, though it did come fairly close. I could not resist checking the thermometer as we left home at 1.45 pm. It was a modest 30^o. The sky was cloudless, Sugar Loaf shimmered behind the slight haze and the icing on the coffee and walnut cake was beginning to run. Indeed, it would have been impossible to choose a better day for a tea party at Cefn Tilla. The only issue was whether we would be able to survive an afternoon of hive inspection in order to qualify for the tea. Around 30 members turned up and most defied the heat to take advantage of the presence of our two seasonal bee inspectors (Mike Pett and Peter Guthrie) to improve beekeeping knowledge and skills.

Some of our experienced members remembered essential business that required urgent attention and were forced to sit in the shade and exercise the little grey cells while the rest, including several beginners, perspired gently in an environment resembling Death Valley with bees. In spite of the discomfort, our intrepid inspectors worked patiently through each colony explaining what they saw, answering questions and offering advice. It is always reassuring to hear the experts say that in many situations there is no right or wrong way of doing something – beekeepers should develop a method with which they feel comfortable. Eventually, the last hive was closed; the veils came off and there followed a general stampede in the direction of the refreshments.

It was a delight to be able to relax under a spreading oak tree and stuff our faces with excellent cakes while chatting with old and new members alike. We are very privileged to be able to enjoy such a wonderful venue. It was a pleasure to welcome Mike and Peter to the Apiary and we are very grateful to them for giving up their time to share their beekeeping knowledge on a summer Sunday. This was certainly a day to remember.

Rattus

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.