Meeting

Our next meeting will be our Mid Winter Dinner held on Wednesday 10th July at the Wig and Pen at 7.00 for 7.30.  The Empty Super Award will again be presented.

---

President’s Note:

I said last month I’d report on the NSW Apiarists State Conference.  Like last year a lot is happening between the State Government, Department of Agriculture and the beekeeping industry.  Recently bees were classified by the Federal Government as animals, bringing them under the umbrella of Plant and Animal Health, Australia.

Some of these changes are things like biosecurity, the AFB reduction policy, and Beequal.  These changes, being important for the industry, will eventually spill over into recreational beekeeping.

The opening day was devoted to the AFB Reduction Policy.  Animal Health Australia require all primary industries to have their own disease risk management plans.  After a full day of discussion the policy was finally voted on and accepted by members.  Copies are available from the Association Library on request.

On Thursday the Conference was officially opened by Ian Cranwell,, Director, Resource and Conservation, Division of Planning, NSW.  Ian saying that 80% of NSW honey comes from public land due to land clearing and $7.8m worth of honey comes out of the Brigalow and Pilliga State Forests annually.

Ian was followed by Rob Manning, Research Officer, WA Agriculture.  His talk was about the different fatty acids in pollen and the role they play in bee health.  It is interesting to know the different types of fatty acids available to bees and how they affect their development. A newsletter article on the subject will be available later this year.

Next came the NSW Agriculture Reports by Bruce White, Mick Rankmore, Doug Somerville and John Rhodes. Bruce said honey production in NSW is down by 30% and Australia's clean green image is helping our exports. There is potential for sending packaged bees to the United Arab Emirates and also the Canadians are looking for some 60,000 queens a year from Australia.  The NSW Government is offering assistance for bushfire damaged hive sites.  Doug recently returned from California having visited beekeepers and almond growers.  Pollination on almond orchards over there is really big business.  His new study into the nutritional needs of honey bees titled “Fat Bees, Skinny Bees” sounds interesting and we look forward to its publication.  John Rhodes reported on his queen bee research the results of which will be out soon.  He is also doing research into cotton pollination.

Michael Hornitzky talked about his research into fatty acids as a cure for AFB.  Mick Rankmore, the Agriculture Department Apiary Regulatory Specialist, informed everyone that complaints of neglected and nuisance hives must now be submitted in writing before the Department can investigate.  The Department is now cracking down on unregistered and unbranded hives in NSW and fines will be issued.  The importance of AFB and EFB notification was emphasised strongly by Mick.  He showed a slide of an abandoned apiary.  Although it was clean he estimated some ten thousand dollars worth of hive gear was lying around.

After lunch Roger Masters, Managing Director of Capilano Honey, spoke about imported honey. It is interesting that there is a world honey shortage at the moment and Australia also has a crop shortage.  The customer reaction to this is to look elsewhere or change products and this is bad for future production.  Imported honey must be labelled as such and be free of additives and there are heavy penalties for breaking this law.

Next Dr Jenny Wilkinson, Senior lecturer in Physiology, Dept of Biomedical Science at Charles Sturt University, gave an informative talk about her research into lavender honey as a healing product. Research on lab rats showed that lavender honey is good for healing wounds.  It is a good sterilising agent, possessing properties like hydrogen peroxide.  To heal a deep wound took about twelve days with a twice daily dressing for four days and once a day after that.  Interesting to note that the hair grew back twice as thick.  Using culture testing lavender honey was compared with other types such as medihoney, jellybush and red stringy bark.  The results proved favourable with medihoney and jellybush.  The next stage is to trial the honey on humans.

Mike Moncur from RIRDC presented his report into the different honey bee research projects being funded by RIRDC in 2002.  I thought it very interesting the subjects being researched such as Doug Somerville’s “Fat Bees, Skinny Bees”, Michael Hornitzky’s research into AFB and chalkbrood and Dr Wolfgang Korth’s project “Adulteration of Pure Honey”.  Talking with Mike later I found out he resides in Canberra and invited him to speak at our meeting early next year.

Friday’s speakers started with Peter Stoneman, Pesticides Officer with the EPA.  Peter’s topic was notification of neighbours using pesticides.  The Pesticide Notification Act of 1999 came into effect in 2000.  Under the Act there are different levels of notification; mandatory being in sensitive areas like public places such as schools and urban parks and voluntary notice being agricultural users.  A pesticide is anything that kills insects, weeds, fungus and bacteria.  Eg Chlorine in the swimming pool is a pesticide.

Beekeepers are advised to inform neighbours of the presence of hives in their area by way of mail, gate notice, personally or by public notice.  Any suspect losses must be reported to the EPA and each case will be investigated on its own merit.  It is much easier to get a better case if previous notice has been given to landholder as breaches of the Act are strict liability offences.  In the future I will seek clarification of ACT EPA laws for beekeepers.

Chris Bennett from the Australian Almond Industry talked about its future.  He explained how the industry is rapidly growing and emphasised the importance of bee pollination.  Almonds were first grown in Adelaide back the 1800s and in the 1960s to 70s orchards moved inland up the Murray River.  Half of Australia’s crop comes from South Australia with Victoria and NSW developing fast due to large holdings funded by corporate investors.

Orchard size ranges from 40 acres to 4000 acres with plantings of 100 trees per acre. Good pollination drastically improves nut quality, making pollination an essential part of orchard management.  Pollination ratios are 3 hives per acre.  It is estimated that by 2007 2.2 million trees will cover 22,000 acres.  That’s a lot of almonds!

Darral Ashton from the Australian Apple and Pear Growers Association spoke on the threat of fire blight to their industry.  Fire blight only affects the trees not the fruit and was first found in the USA in the 1800s. Pear trees are very susceptible.  Australia provides 33% of the world pear production.  To date there is no known cure but it can be controlled with antibiotic, the ultimate control being the chainsaw.  Fire blight spores can be spread by wind, birds, dew and bees.  Other host plants are cotoneaster, hawthorn and roses.  In the event of an outbreak involving beehives they would be transported in cool storage containers to a remote site for quarantine. Through biosecurity the honeybee industry has a contingency plan in case of an outbreak.

Mike Thompson of State Forests NSW, Deniliquin presented a talk on rain flow rejection.  This is the diversion of unwanted irrigation quotas from dams in the North into forest land along the Murray River.

An interesting talk by Lou Revelant from NSW Agriculture about the citrus industry followed.  Citrus is the world’s most important crop fruit and was first grown in China 800 years ago.  Citrus is grown commercially in all Australian states except Tasmania and the ACT with 40% coming from NSW.  There are hundreds of different varieties available and the industry is a big employer.  It is also known that bees become cranky when working citrus.  The fruit was first grown in Bourke, NSW in the early 1900s and was so sweet it was shipped to the King in England.  Lou emphasised that quality, management and training at all levels of industry is extremely important.

Bill Winner, Beekeepers Service Manager for Capilano, gave a brief presentation and update of the beekeepers quality assurance program and took questions from the floor.

Lastly Murray Spicer from NSW Agriculture spoke extensively on food safety and quality assurance.  This covers Food Acts and Food Standards Codes and how they apply to beekeepers.  Because this is a fairly extensive topic I won’t go into detail now but will present something in a later newsletter.

The Conference ended with dinner that evening and an announcement that next year’s Conference would take place in Queanbeyan.  Saturday’s field trip was a visit to a number of rural industry packhouses and processing plants for a look at their Quality Assurance Systems.

It was interesting to read latest Victorian Crop Report published in a recent AHBIC newsletter.  Here is an excerpt.  “After a long warm Autumn with temperatures above average Winter has suddenly arrived with cold showery weather across the state.”  With snow on the ranges I hope your bees are tucked away snug and I hope to see everyone at the Wig and Pen on the 10^th.

David Lillis

---

June Meeting

The June meeting was well attended and members displayed some of their innovative gadgets and tools.  Members enjoyed finding out first hand from Paul’s computer about the some of the sites available on the Internet and the excellent research material available on the RIRDC CD-ROM.  Herb’s all purpose heating box which can be modified to warm honey buckets or melt wax and Derek’s bracket for keeping frames off the ground while inspecting hives were among the useful gadgets displayed.

 

 

---

 

Mid Winter Picnic

The Mid Winter picnic was only attended by a few members but we had a lovely sunny Canberra day and enjoyed a couple of hours of good food and good company at the Surveyors Park.  Some members even stretched their legs and took a “bushwalk” around the base of Parliament House.

---

STRANGE THINGS THAT BEES HAVE BEEN KNOWN TO DO.

Having kept bees for nearly 30 years and having worked for other apiarists, I have seen some peculiar happenings.  I will describe the two which seemed strangest to me.

The season before last, I put an escape on a nest about one mile from my home.  After leaving it on for nearly three weeks, I removed the escape and bought the hive home.  On opening the hive, I found about 6 frames of bees, a laying queen and just a cell of honey here and there.  There was no honey coming in from the field, and there being nearly 200 hives nearby, the bees would rob very quickly.

Two or three days after, I noticed the bees of the new hive going full force towards the old nest.  This hive gained so much honey that I was able to take out a heavy comb every second night and place it in other new hives that were in need of it.  This hive must have robbed nearly 60 lbs of honey from the old nest, and although conditions were bad other bees never found the honey in the old nest.

Another strange thing I saw was when I was assisting in requeening 26 out of 28 hives in an apiary.  The day of introducing was nice weather and the old queens were not really done, so the apiarist for whom I was working decided to make some increase with them.  He took 26 empty boxes to the apiary. He took one frame of brood and bees and the old queen out of each old hive and placed it in the new hives, making up 26 one-frame hives.  These were taken to a new stand one mile away.  The new queens were introduced in the old hives by the “pouring in” method two hours later.

The next morning on going to the old apiary we thought we had found the worst.  The 26 requeened hives all had up to 2 or 3 hundred dead and being killed bees around the entrances but the two hives that were not requeened never had any dead bees.  Being afraid to interfere we left them and came back five days later and found each of the 26 new queens laying well.

We eventually decided that the old hives had changed to being headed by the new queens overnight and the bees returning from the new made up hives had become foreign to the old hives.

Generally beekeepers think out some reasons for strange things that bees do, and in the case of one hive robbing so much honey without being aided by other hives, I thought the nest in the tree could have been a long way down and possibly the darkness stopped strange bees finding their way.

Geoff Shaw, Loder St., Quirindi, NSW.

1^st Prize; CAA Essay Competition.

Published in ABK August 1946

---

Winter Tasks for Beekeepers

Winter is an opportunity to do some of the many organisational things that make the busy period of Spring and Summer a little easier.  We can make up new boxes and frames, clean up and repaint old boxes and other equipment and rewire and wax old frames.  It is also a good time to tidy up the workshop and make any changes that might make the season easier.

The crafty among us can make some candles for gifts.  Don’t forget to set aside some of your best candles to enter in the Canberra Show next year.  There will be classes for dipped, molded  and rolled candles.  Make some wax molds and a wax block for your show entry as well.  Have a try at making some mead.  Instructions are available from Brew Your Own at Home at Kambah Shopping Village or other brewing shops and they also have supplies of suitable equipment and yeasts and other brewing supplies.

Don’t forget to check your hive from time to time and be especially careful when the weather begins to warm up in early Spring.  This is the time that bees begin to use large quantities of stored honey to raise brood while there may still be very little nectar or pollen available for them to collect.

Hives may be checked at any time by hefting the back of the hive and judging by the weight how much stored honey is there.  When we have a warm still day, temperature 14 or 15 degrees and no breeze you can have a quick look inside but be careful not to expose any brood for more than a few minutes or you may end up with dead brood through chilling.  If stores run low the bees may be fed using a Boardman feeder or one of the many methods of top feeding.  Ensure that the bees have enough pollen available as well as honey.

A bit of extra care now will help to ensure that we enter the honey season with strong healthy hives ready to take advantage of the honey flow.