Newsletter of the Beekeepers Association of the ACT Incorporated
Newsletter Web address:
www.bindaree.com.au/newsletter.htm
Meetings of the Beekeepers Association of the ACT Inc are held on the second
Wednesday of the month at 7.30 pm at the CIT, Heysen Street, Weston in Building A
Contact No: Association President – David Lillis Ph: 62975202 (AH)
April 2002
Our next meeting will be held on Wednesday 10th
April at 7.30pm, at CIT Weston. The
formal business of the meeting will be completed by 8:00pm, at which time
will begin a discussion and practical demonstration. The subject for the night is “Frame and Foundation”.
The modern removable frame, and what happens on
it, is a focal point for both the bees and the beekeeper. Aspects to be covered include, among other
things: types, materials, construction
and care of frames and foundation; wiring of frames; inserting foundation
into the frame; using foundation in the hive; honey extraction issues; re-using
frames and foundation.
A range of frames, foundation and their construction tools will collected by the presenters (Paul Hooper and Lyn Shiels) for display and use in the discussion. Other members are invited to bring along relevant unusual or less-common materials or tools that may be of interest.
Hi
members. How is the Autumn harvest coming along? Perhaps with the present
balmy weather we might get a little more honey after all.
The
AGM had a good turnout and some burning questions were resolved. Thank you to those committee members who stood
for election again and to the new committee members. Congratulations to all the new committee.
Thank you to everyone who gave me a vote of confidence and elected
me as President again.
This
year looks set to be a busy and exciting one for the Association. I look forward to seeing you all at the next
meeting or at the Anzac Day picnic.
David Lillis
The following committee was elected at the Annual General Meeting on 13th March 2002.
President David Lillis 6297 5202
or mobile 0413 426 290
Vice President Robert Gardiner 6231 0383
Secretary Mark Hosking 6257 4777
Treasurer Graham Turner 6251 9422
Newsletter Lyn Shiels 6286 2421
Public Officer Derek Butler 6286 5377
Librarian Dick Johnston 6281 2111
Committee Roy Bray 6258 3433
Robert Shaw 6254 0018
Judy Burgess 6231 6018
Domenic Staun 6296 3670
Members are reminded that membership renewals are now due. The recent Annual General Meeting set the subscription rate at $35 for 2002. The increase will allow the Association to cover projected expenses for the coming year.
Our Anzac Day Picnic will be held at Tanbella Orchard in Pialligo. There is a lovely picnic area by a small lake and it is usually possible to drive close to the picnic area. Drive into the Tanbella driveway then past the apple shop. Weather permitting, there will be hive inspections conducted on some of Derek’s hives nearby, so bring a veil or beesuit along. The inspections will provide a practical follow-up on issues raised in the March meeting on Autumn Shutdown and this month’s Frame and Foundation.
Worth a Try?
…. the Mercer Mat.
Most beekeepers insert some kind of inner cover between the top super and the hive lid. Although used overseas, inner covers or ceilings made of plywood or masonite with a rim of battens all round to provide beespace above top bars are not normally used in Australia. However, mats made of plastic, floor vinyl, carpet, hessian and other similar materials are commonly used here. Various experienced Australian beekeepers champion the use of hive mats in a variety of materials and designs.
Our own Cec Mercer uses and recommends a mat of his own design. The Mercer Mat can be made easily and inexpensively by any beekeeper. It is specifically designed to provide appropriate ventilation to reduce excessive moisture in the hive, but it also useful in:
· deterring the building of burr comb in the hive lid;
· encouraging the bees not to propolise ventilation holes in the lid; and
· assisting winter storage of empty drawn comb.
The Mercer Mat is a sheet of plastic, cut to allow air to rise on all four edges of the mat as well as up between the top bars of the central two frames of the top super. The mat for the standard 8 frame hive should be no wider than 28cm, nor longer than 43cm. The rectangular sheet is then folded into quarters and a section cut out of the folded edge such that, when the sheet is opened out, an elongated oval hole is made in the sheet. The resultant hole should be 2 to 3 cm across and 15 to 20 cm long.
A wide variety of plastic sheeting can be used to make these mats. However, any non-absorbent sheeting that can be cut to the appropriate shape may be used. There is advantage in using a material that is easily obtainable, easily cut and cheap.
The mat is laid across the top of the frames under the lid, providing a ventilation gap all around and between the middle top bars.
The main principle behind the design of the Mercer Mat is that the greatest danger to the health of the colony in winter is not cold, but excessive moisture. The cluster is the effective temperature management tool of the wintering colony; but wetting of the cluster by condensation of moisture expired by the bees can greatly reduce that effectiveness. The central opening in the mat allows the colony to regulate ventilation of the winter cluster and better control humidity and temperature within the cluster. The design assumes that the hive lid is fitted with ventilation holes to the outside.
The mat is also effective in minimising the development of burr comb in the hive lid. Comb will not be built in the area between the mat and the lid unless the beekeeper is slow in adding additional supers when a flow is in progress and the colony runs out of room below the mat.
Bees will often block or reduce the size of ventilation holes in the hive lid with propolis; however, when the Mercer mat is used it is very rare for those ventilation holes to be even partially propolised.
The mat is particularly useful when supers of extracted comb are stored on the hives over winter. Rather than treating stored empty combs throughout the winter with PDB or Phostoxin, one super of empty comb can be stored on each hive, above a mat. The bees will not occupy the stored frames in normal circumstances but, in warmer moments over the winter, will venture into the stored box and generally keep it free of wax moth. If an unexpected flow occurs in early Spring, the bees will use the stored combs if they run out of space below the mat.
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The NSW Apiarists Association have produced a final draft of their AFB Reduction Policy. The aim is to reduce the incidence of AFB by 50% by 2006. One of the main proposals is for honey sample testing of all registered hives. In the first year apiarists with more than 50 hives will submit samples and in the second year apiarists with 1-50 hives will join the program. A subsidy scheme for the cost of testing is being proposed. NSW Agriculture will review the level of subsidy annually.
Anyone who would like a copy of the detailed proposal should contact a committee member.
Recipes
These
recipes won Paul Helliwell first prizes at the recent Canberra show. Paul
has been generous enough to share his secrets with us.
Chilli Jam
1½ medium red chillies, de-seeded and roughly chopped
1 lb (450g) VERY ripe tomatoes
2 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
1 inch (2½ cm) root ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
1 tbs fish sauce (omit for vegetarians)
8oz (225g) honey (originally demerara sugar)
2 fl oz (55 ml) red wine vinegar
1 tbs balsamic vinegar
Roughly chop the tomatoes (you can leave the skins on). Put half in the blender with chillies, garlic, ginger and fish sauce. Whiz until pureed then put in a pan. Pulse the rest of the tomatoes (or chop a bit finer) and add them to the pan. Add all other ingredients and bring to the boil slowly, stirring all the time.
When it reaches the boil skim off any scum and continue to cook, uncovered, for about 30-40 minutes. Make sure you stir every five minutes or so to stop sticking. You also need to scrape the sides of the pan every so often to make sure everything gets properly cooked. It will reduce by about half and look shiny and like a runny jam. It won’t do the set test like fruit jams so don’t bother. Pour into hot sterilised jars and seal.
Adapted
from Delia Smith “How to Cook, Book Three”
Honey-drenched Anise Slice
2 cups (300g) self raising flour
1 cup (150g) plain flour
3 tsp. anise seeds (I don’t like anise so I used the seeds from 7 green cardamom pods, finely ground)
1 tsp. cinnamon
½cup (80g) fine semolina
½cup (110g) caster sugar
½ cup (70g) slivered almonds, toasted
¾ cup (180ml) vegetable oil
½ cup (125ml) milk
1 egg, lightly beaten
Honey Syrup
1½ cups (375ml) honey
1/3 cup (75g) caster sugar
1/3 cup (80ml) water
Grease a 20cm x 30cm lamington tin. Sift all the flours into a large bowl; add all the other ingredients and stir until a soft dough forms. Press into the pan and bake in a moderate oven (180ºC). Combine all of the syrup ingredients in a pan and heat gently until the sugar dissolves.
Simmer uncovered for 2 minutes.
Pour the hot syrup over the hot cake, cool in the pan, remove and serve.
From “Australian Women’s Weekly Gourmet Gifts”
KIPLING AMONG THE BEES.
Abridged from a Broadcast by Mr Norman McCanceon 3LO, 24/5/46
Kipling bred
British black bees down at Bateman’s in Sussex, and in his autobiography
“Something of Myself” he tells of a brook at the foot of his garden which
would flood devastatingly. In one of his finest poems published in August.
1914, with “The Vortex” he tells how one night it rose and swept all his
hives away.
“I was Lord of Cities very sumptuously builded,
Seven roaring Cities paid me tribute
from afar.
Ivory their outposts were – the guardrooms
of them gilded,
And garrisoned with Amazons invincible
in war.”
“Banded, mailed and arrogant, from sunrise into
sunset,
Singing while they sacked it, they possessed
the land at large.
Yet when men would rob them, they resisted,
they made onset.
And pierced the smoke of battle with
a thousand sabred charge!”
A thousand sabred charge, however, is an understatement, for though golden banded Italian bees are gentle and docile, they can get thoroughly out of hand at times and tucking trousers into socks is not proof against their onset.
“The river rose at midnight and it washed away
my cities, they are evened with Atlantis
and the town before the flood.”
Kipling wrote about “The
Mother Hive” in which he describes what happens when the wax-moth gets among
the frames.
“There was black comb
so old that the bees had forgotten where it hung, orange, buff and ochre-varnished
store-comb built as bees were used to build before the days of artificial
foundations, and there was a little white frail new work - the whole gummed
and glued into twisted scrap-work, awry on the wires, half-cells, beginnings
abandoned or grandiose, weak-walled composite cells pierced out with rubbish
and capped with dirt. Good or bad,
every web of it so riddled by the tunnel of the wax-moth that it broke in
clouds of dust as it was flung on the heap”.
Kipling goes on to describe how all of this went into the bonfire
as the apiarist cleaned and disinfected the ruined hives.
A diverting account is
found in “The Vortex” of how bees took possession of an English town and
swarmed up and down, putting a military band, a picnic, a politician, and
a train of excursionists to flight
An inexcusable
mistake (remembering that Kipling said he was an experienced apiarist) was
in making a boy on a bicycle loaded with four paper bonnet boxes, carry
four full swarms of bees, which when upset by a collision with Kipling’s
motor, threw a peaceful village into utter confusion.
A full swarm of bees weighs 10 pounds, so that it is unlikely that
a boy would carry nearly half a hundredweight of bees on a bicycle, nor
is it at all likely that swarms of bees gorged with honey and therefore
disinclined to sting, would take on an entire village.
However, a poet, who is also an apiarist may surely be given some
poetic licence about bees - and it is quite easy to become poetic over bees.
With his tremendous
zest for knowledge and admiration of skilled technique, Kipling would surely
have been a master apiarist had he either lived longer or taken up the craft
earlier. It was a sad day for England
when Kipling and his King died within a few hours of one another so that
people said “The King has gone and has taken his Trumpeter with him.”
Yes, if Kipling
had worked more among his bees that trumpet might have sounded for England
in the years when she had most need of it. Because nearly all the bee-masters of history lived to very ripe
old ages, round about the middle nineties most of them. This was due to a number of factors - they
worked a lot in the open air with an absorbing hobby so fascinating that
it never grows stale, they were men of calm control and temperament, trained
to sure unhurried movement among the hives, they ate plenty of honey; and
they were stung sufficiently often to keep free of rheumatism.
So I like
to think of Kipling among his bees down by A friendly brook with his trousers
tucked in and his smoker going full blast and his glasses shining like headlights
behind his veil. I hope he did not wear gloves for to work among your bees
with bare hands and arms requires just that nice amount of moral courage
that keeps even angry bees under control.
I believe
it has something to do with fear causing adrenalin in the blood, so bees
know when you are scared of them, as do dogs and horses as well as tigers
in the circus arena. I do know that
bees have a great respect for those who walk up and open their hives - after
carefully smoking them first - and say, as if standing no nonsense “Now,
then, move over, there!” In my case,
of course, it’s a tremendous bluff, but it always works.
What a far
cry it is from Bateman’s down in Sussex to my beautiful docile Ligurians
on the hill tops of the Dandenong Ranges.
They have thrust forth to perish the golden drones that were so eager
in “a serving of the Queen” and the whole community is being run very smoothly
and very efficiently by a bunch of feminine economists, or economic feminists
(please yourself!).
Kipling called
the female workers of the hive “the
harsh envenomed virgins that can neither love nor play”. There is a great moral lesson here for someone,
and perhaps it is that our national community would be better run by women.
But, hush!, that, as Kipling would say, is another story.
Quite another story.
Delivery of the Association’s newsletters is available
through the Internet, providing advantages for both the individual member
and for the Association as a whole.
For the member: The newsletter is available within hours of its completion, rather than days later after paper printing and snail-mailing. Although posted copies are in black and white only, Internet delivered newsletters are in full glorious colour. They are stored on-line for reading, reference and printing-out whenever desired.
For the Association: Internet delivery saves printing and mailing costs and reduces the workload for the members responsible for the publishing of the newsletters.
Please consider taking the newsletter by Internet and advise Paul Hooper by email at phooper@pcug.org.au.
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Tentative Timetable for 2002 Activities
Apr 25 th Anzac
Day Picnic and Hive Inspection May 8 th
Commercial Beekeeping – Guest Speaker: Des Cannon (Organiser:
David Lillis) Jun 12 th To
be advised Jul 10 th Midwinter
Swarming (Dinner) Aug 14 th Craft
and Gadgets Night Sep 11 th Spring
Management and Swarm Collecting Oct 9 th
Guest Speaker Nov 13 th TBA Dec 11 th Christmas
Party |
|
Possible
Additional Weekend Activities:
Mid Winter Madness Picnic in June Hive Crawl in July or August Trip to Sutherland to Council Sponsored
Centre. |
Welcome to John Green of Lyons, Bob Jovanovic of Weston and Tom Beck of Fadden.
The Animal Diseases (Amendment) Bill 1997 repealed the Apiaries Act 1928. The provisions of the Animal Diseases Act 1993 have replaced the Apiaries Act as the basis for legislative control of beekeeping in the ACT.
Although there is no longer a requirement to be registered as a beekeeper with Environment ACT the disease aspect of beekeeping is administered under the Animal Diseases Act. As necessary, bee diseases can be declared as exotic or endemic diseases under the Act.
The following diseases have been declared Endemic Diseases under the Animal Diseases Act.
American
Brood Disease Nosema
Disease
Chalk
Brood Disease
Stone Brood Disease
European Brood
The following diseases have been declared Exotic Diseases under the Animal Diseases Act.
Africanised
Bee Tracheal
Mite
Asian Bees Tropilaelaps Mite
Asian Mite Varroa Mite
Braula
Fly
The Animal Diseases (Bees) Regulations prohibits the keeping of honeybees other than in frame hives. The regulations also prohibits a person from exposing honey or honey comb, other than in a frame hive, in a way that honeybees may have access to it.
Health inspections are normally carried out on the request of a beekeeper suspecting brood disease or when transferring hives interstate. Where an inspection is required Environment ACT should be contacted on 6207 9777. Environment ACT contracts experienced people to carry out this service.
A health certificate is issued when no disease is detected with an interstate transfer.
If a hive is identified as having American Foulbrood, the colonies must be destroyed by burning. When American Brood Disease is confirmed, Environment ACT will nominate a site on unleased land for burning, on a case by case basis. The cost of destroying the diseased hives will be met by Environment ACT.
Where a hive is identified as having European Foulbrood the colonies may be treated with an anti-biotic, normally obtainable from a local veterinary on receiving documentation eg. lab results.
If testing for a brood disease is necessary a smear is taken from the brood (or a piece of comb) and sent to the laboratory for confirmation.
The sample is sent with covering documentation to:
Michael Hornitzky
Elizabeth Macarthur Agriculture Institute
PMB 8
Camden NSW 2570
Confirmation usually takes approximately 7 days. During that time the hive should be quarantined or isolated. The cost for testing smears or slides for European and American Foulbrood is $18.80 and the cost of testing honey for American Foulbrood spores is $23. This cost will be met by Environment ACT
If an exotic disease is suspected such as Varroa Mite contact Environment ACT 6207 9777.
Environment Protection
Environment ACT
November 2001
ENVIRONMENT
ACT
ENVIRONMENT PROTECTION
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Richard Johnston Phone: 02 6281 2111 Email: bindaree.bee@bigpond.com Website: www.bindaree.com.au Shop open: Wed, Thur, Fri 4 pm to 6 pm, Sat 9.30 am to 4pm Closed: Sun, Mon, Tue. |
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