Monthly Notes

Newsletter

Apimondia 2007

The general opinion was that all pollinators have been in decline for about the last fifty years. But not all current losses are due to CCD -- there is a lot of media hype which would have us believe it is 90%. Beekeepers think it might be around 50%. In reality there are misconceptions about the losses and still no real answer. Again I made notes which I will try to condense into a separate article as the discussion lasted over two hours. It is always an education to wonder round the trade stands. Some exhibitors had gone to great lengths to make their stand colourfully decorated and interesting with their display of products. Others had just a few posters with leaflets on a table.

Jarrah Honey Promotion

There were new products made with honey, giveaways of booklets and sweets, different honeys to taste (including Jarrah honey from the Eucalyptus marginata tree highly antimicrobial which could rival Manuka honey), and a filter system for straining honey with a built in heating element with thermostat to keep the honey flowing, books to buy (I said a brief hello to Northern Bee Books who had a table), brand new products like the drum shaped hive with cir­cular frames (remember the catenary hive?), soaps and creams and beautifully moulded wax candles.

The new look Drum Shaped Hive

On the Friday the whole Congress climbed into buses for the technical visit. During the morning drive our guides on the bus talked about beekeeping in Australia. One of their concerns was the drought that has affected honey production and honeybees are not allowed in conservation areas. The main forage sources are the eucalypts and bee­keepers are generally optimistic for the fu­ture. Our destination was the family owned McDonald honey producing and packing enterprise. There are some 2000 hives which provides contract pollination to fruit crops and averages about 100 kg per hive mainly from eucalypts. We had a guided tour of the extracting plant and the workshop where Langstroth hives are assembled on site, before going to a small apiary. It was too cool a day for hives to be opened but a few bees were flying. We were treated to samples of various honeys to taste from specific tree sources, quite different to our Cornish floral honey. Lunch was at a big agricultural centre where we could buy goodies from displays by the local beekeeping groups and craft stands before having to return to Melbourne.

It was an excellent Congress, with much knowledge to be absorbed and recorded.

Gillian Searle

                               __________________________

My first meeting with Wilson Came was due to advice given to me by Mr. Harrison Ashforth after a lecture at Probus Gardens many years ago just after I started to keep bees. He came by HA's personal recommendation as the producer of some of the finest stocks in Cornwall. I duly contacted Mr. Carne and he agreed to sell me two queens of the Buckfast strain and our lifelong friendship grew from the moment we met.

Wilson told me his interest in bees started when he was a very young boy at his grandparents farm in the parish of Zennor where he used to lay down on a large granite boulder to watch the bees going to and fro from some twenty or so skeps which stood on granite mushrooms in the bee garden. Because of my interest in bees Wilson kindly offered to teach me his technique of breeding queen bees for myself, I spent many wonderful days in Wilson’s apiary where he showed me everything from making the wax cups to grafting larvae to the production and hatching of the new queens. His knowledge was incredible.

The hospitality I received from both Mr. & Mrs. Carne was amazing and I would like to thank them both for that was most gratefully received. Wilson was a man of endless knowledge and not just about bees but all faculties of life in general. But his great love of bees shone like a beacon through everything, his vast knowledge was gained by sheer hard work and dedication and by working in his holidays for some of the biggest bee farms in the country just for the experience.

Wilson Carne right picture with Terry West

I was saddened by Wilson's passing but his wonderful memories will always be with me every time I open a hive of bees as there in front of me will be something Wilson had shown me and that will remind me of him. I feel honoured and privileged to have received a life time’s knowledge and experience from a wonderful friend and bee master.

Terry West

I have a colony which has been plagued with chalk brood.  The queen is in her second full year and was somewhat disappointing last year but I would like to give her a chance to prove herself.  Chalk brood is a fungus which attacks the larvae and kills it. There is no recognised cure although requeening is said to be effective sometimes.  I tried all the treatments offered by folklore, including using banana skins and sprinkling salt along the top bars, with some promising interludes but no overall satisfactory result.  Despite a rain of mummies the colony is building up well and is strong enough, I believe, to cope with shook swarm treatment.

The shook swarm is pretty drastic but can achieve spectacular results if conditions are right.  Basically all the old brood, comb and stores are taken away and the bees are put in a clean hive on foundation and fed sugar syrup until they can support themselves.  All sources of infection other than that which might be on the bee are removed.  I would normally use strong sugar syrup (2lb sugar/1pint water) but having read a strong argument for the weaker (1:1) syrup during the winter I am using it for the first shook swarm.

My foundation was left over from last year and so the frames were left in the greenhouse to warm and lose their brittleness.  Foundation tends to warp a little when warmed, if overheated it may warp a lot, but it can be flattened when warm by using two sheets of plywood cut to fit inside the frame.  One sheet is placed on a flat surface and the frame of foundation fitted on top of it. The second sheet is placed on the foundation and gently pushed down.  The foundation is now flat.  It makes the removal of the plywood easier if the top sheet has a loop of cord glued to it.

The hive to be treated is moved to one side and a clean floorboard is put in its place.  It is best to lock the queen in until she starts laying and so a queen excluder is put on top of the floorboard.  Put a clean brood box with frames of foundation on the new floorboard and then gently shake the bees, frame by frame, on to their new home.  It is good practice to locate the queen first and isolate her until all the bees have been moved but it is not essential as long as the transfer is gentle. Place a fresh crown board over the box and feed immediately.  If there is a strong flow the bees might ignore the feeder but the weather is fickle and the feeder should be left on as a reserve until the colony is settled. As soon as all the foundation is drawn a super can be added.  It will help if inner, drawn, frames without brood are moved to the outside from time to time.

What does one do with the old frames?  If the shook swarm was used because of European Foul Brood then they will be destroyed.  The bee inspector will have supervised the whole procedure and there is no alternative.  If the shook swarm was for another reason one must use one’s judgement.  My frames containing brood were distributed to other colonies. Those containing stores will be treated with acetic acid before being used to stock nucleus boxes and the rest will go to the solar wax extractor.

The Bailey comb change is a less drastic way of changing the old brood comb. A clean brood box filled with frames of foundation is put over the current brood box and left until some of the foundation is drawn.  If a drawn but unused brood frame has been saved from last year it may replace a frame of foundation and speed the process.  When the new brood box has some drawn foundation it should be isolated with a queen excluder top and bottom and the queen introduced. The colony must now be fed until all the foundation is drawn. When the foundation is fully drawn a super can be added. After 21 days there will be no brood in the old, lower, box and it and its queen excluder should be removed.  A fresh floor should be given at this stage.

Swarming time is upon us.  Keep checking for signs of swarming and have a plan to deal with queen cells when they appear.

 Louis Riley