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WERE YOU CAUGHT OUT (ALL FOOLS DAY) Basic
exam This
will be taking place in June. If
anyone else would like to have a go at taking it please
get in touch with Janet. 01291
690331 Are You Doing This? Keep
checking stores carefully after this mild winter. If
you have oil seed rape anywhere near you, you will need to be putting on supers.
Try using unwired foundation so that the honey can be melted out easily if it
goes solid. Make
certain that you have a spare nuc box in case you need it in a hurry. Select
the colony you are going to use for queen raising and choose a method. Eric
is going to do some queen raising in the apiary for the more advanced
beekeepers. Make sure you are there if you are interested. Apiary
Meeting at Cefn Tilla Thank you everyone who came to work. There was an enjoyable get-together at the association
apiary on March 21st. The bees were totally ignored except by Brian who mowed
the grass round them. The workparty diligently cleaned up old frames and put in
new foundation so we are now ready to collect any swarms that may elude control
and to practice shook swarm if necessary. With the warm weather there may be a
need for supers soon as well. We were even allowed a cup of tea. The next meeting at the apiary will be on 13th May but
if you have the time and inclination for a bit of extra work then phone John and
offer your services. 01873 831273. Comment. I have a field of rape next to me which has been trying
to open for the last month. Every warm day it goes a bit more yellow and I can
see clouds of bees heading off for it, good for spring build up I keep telling
myself. The blackthorn is also opening, according to my last year’s notes this
is exactly a month earlier than last year BUT last year spring was a month late.
So we must be back to normal. I have put on supers, one colony was bursting and
already has some drone brood. I had a quick peep in. Les always says you can
open your bees once the flowering currant is out, and there is some out in my
hedge. Another criterion is that you can stand in the apiary in shirt sleeves.
It wasn’t quite warm enough for that, hence the quickness of the peep. Despite
the rape there are also masses of bees on every other flowering plant in the
garden so it is demonstrably true
that they like variety, even when they have to hunt for it. Bridget CCD I
expect you all have heard, or been asked as experts on all things bee connected,
about this disaster that is sweeping across USA. It stands for Colony Collapse
Disorder and describes colonies that at any time of year from being
perfectly healthy, in a few days just collapse. The adults just disappear. They
do not form a swarm, it isn’t absconding as they don’t take the queen. There
are no dead bees lying around in front of the hives. There have been no reports
of swarms of bees milling around, no-one has seen them leave the hives. When the beekeeper finds them there is sometimes a queen and
a few young bees, presumably just emerged, with all their stores and brood.
Amazingly none of the natural robbers, wax moth, wasps or hive beetle touch the
hive (not immediately anyway). Also, amazingly, the high powered USA experts
working on it have failed to find any traces of poison or disease. There are a
number of theories that they are following but so far there has been no single
denominator common to all the beekeepers involved, who are mainly commercial and
mainly migratory but not solely. Most (but not all) feed their bees, but they
use different things, most used antibiotics (!!!) but that varied, most had used
a miticide in 2006 but that also had varied. This has happened to 1000’s of
colonies, some commercial beekeepers have lost 90% of their stock. It has
affected pollination of course, I read somewhere that
they are importing bees from Australia for pollination. I
have been emailing Dewey Caron who some of you might remember, he came over to
edit an edition of Bees for Development for Nicola, and gave a talk to the Wye
Valley beekeepers on Africanised bees, about which he is something of an expert
and has written a book “Africanised Honey Bees In The Americas”. As an
entomologist at Delaware University I thought he would be able to throw light on
the problem—I’ve since found out that he is one of the experts on
the Working Group, so this is horse’s mouth stuff.
Bridget FIFTY
YEARS OF BEEKEEPING At
the March Goytre meeting Reg Griffiths was presented with a certificate from the
BBKA to celebrate the fact that he has kept bees for 50 years. Actually
he has kept bees for 72 years but they don’t have a certificate for that! We
are very pleased and proud that he is a member of the Association. Reg
always comes to meetings to hear what is going on. He has a fund of stories and
anecdotes of his own about his beekeeping exploits, some of which are
unrepeatable, and he has probably tried more techniques for everything, than most
of us have dreamt of. March
meeting at Goytre Unfortunately
Don Streatfield, the speaker who was expected in March, was ill and unable to
come and talk to us, but luckily and
very kindly at extremely short notice Mike Pett stepped into the breach and came
to Goytre on March 8th. His talk was on Wax, and he boldly entertained his
audience with a demonstration of furniture polish and
furniture cream making, telling us all the while how dangerous the
process was. The airtight containers that he used were tins for the polish and
jars for the cream (both can be purchased from Thornes and probably other
suppliers). Remember, if you are making for sale, that you have to mark the
containers with a hazard warning label due to the turpentine content. There was
a good crowd there all of whom can now make their own, but for those who missed
it here are his recipes. FURNITURE
POLISH. INGREDIENTS
10oz
beeswax; 1 pint natural turpentine; for a harder polish replace 2oz beeswax with
2oz stearine or 1oz carnuba wax. METHOD
Melt
the waxes in a double saucepan over hot water. Similarly heat the turpentine and
pour into the wax with care. Whisk to ensure thorough blending and then pour
into airtight containers. NOTE
Ensure
the wax is clean with no particles of grit present. To clean wax strain through
2 – 3 layers of muslin or J cloths. You can also use a double thickness of
ladies tights but make sure you have removed your wife’s legs first or she may
get annoyed!! If
you want to produce a first class product use pure natural turpentine from the
Philippines. Use of white spirit or turps substitute is not recommended, as this
will produce an inferior product. FURNITURE CREAM. INGREDIENTS
6oz
beeswax; ½ pint rainwater; 1 pint turpentine; ¼ oz borax (one teaspoon), ½ oz
soap-flakes (2 teaspoons). METHOD
Dissolve
the borax and soap flakes in the hot rainwater. Add the beeswax and when
dissolved pour the warmed turpentine into the container and mix thoroughly with
a single bladed electric whisk. IMPORTANT
NOTE – BEESWAX AND TURPENTINE ARE INFLAMMABLE SO TAKE EVERY PRECAUTION NOT TO
OVERHEAT. NEVER POUR WAX INTO HOT TURPENTINE – THE EFFECTS OF THIS ARE
SPECTACULAR BUT POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS.
Bailey
Comb Change
Fact Sheet 10 1.
Is it easy?
All procedures are simple unless you have difficulty in finding queens.
If so it would be wise to get an experienced beekeeper to help with that stage. 2.
When
can I do it?
March to early June, but the earlier the better. If the colony is strong
you can start the procedure in early March, the old comb can then be removed
before the honey flow; but remember you will need to feed to get the new combs
drawn. 3.
How do I perform a Bailey comb change?
Prepare a clean brood chamber filled with frames of foundation. Place
this chamber over the existing brood chamber. Unless there is a strong nectar
flow feed with winter strength sugar syrup i.e.1/2 ltr. of water to 1 kg. of
white granulated sugar. When the bees have drawn out some of the foundation,
find the queen and place her on this comb. Put a queen excluder over the old
brood chamber and under the new, thus trapping the queen in the upper chamber.
Remember to keep feeding so the bees build comb. After three weeks remove the
old brood chamber. The brood will by then have hatched so the comb can be
destroyed or rendered to recover the beeswax. 4.
What
else should I be aware of? Make
sure that your foundation is ‘fresh’. Old foundation becomes hard and
brittle so bees tend to chew it into holes. It can be restored by carefully
warming it, which releases the oils making it usable again. Use
accurate spacing between the frames and make sure it is ‘narrow’, not wide
or out of parallel. Combs at the end of the chamber tend not to be drawn on the outer face.
This is because the bees find it hard to cluster there to generate wax. Turn the
frame round or move it further into the box so that they can draw it out. This fact sheet was prepared by John Verran. Its main purpose is to get the bees onto a complete set of new brood combs, important as a treatment for nosema but no good for treatment of brood disease or for varroa control. ........................................................................................................................ Some pictures that were taken at the apiary when John Verran Demonstrated the correct and safe way to apply a regulated dosage of Oxalic Acid (3-6%) to the nest to control Varroa infestation.:- That looks very interesting John Verran explains
There look you can see the varroa Drizzle 5ml. of 3-6% oxalic acid sticking to the honey on my finger on each line of bees between the frames
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