Meeting

Our next meeting will be held on Wednesday 11th June at 7.30pm, at CIT Weston.  Our guest speaker is Dominic Staun who will demonstrate the art of mead making and share some delightful meads for tasting.

The business section of the meeting is from 7.30 and the demonstration will begin at 8.00. There will be time for a cup of tea and chat after the meeting.

President’s Report

Members may know of a request from Angie Parker of Ginninderra District High School for the Association’s help in the establishment of a beekeeping enterprise at the school.

This project is part of the wider Agriculture curriculum and is also part of “Schools As Communities Strategic Projects”, an initiative of the ACT Department of Education, Youth and Family Services.

I have attended the school each Friday afternoon since April, and can report that whilst I have not been overwhelmed with student interest, a few students show promise for the future.  Currently we are repairing and refurbishing 10 boxes donated by the Agriculture Teacher’s husband and, come Spring, we will obtain bees to make up 5 hives.

If anyone is interested in participating, or even only to have a sticky-beak at our activities, please contact me for details.

In company of our Secretary Mark, I recently visited the home of a harassed non-beekeeper, and the source of her harassment, a neighbouring property having an unknown but large number of beehives present.

These hives appear to be poorly managed and maintained and the owner is obviously unaware of regulations regarding exposure of comb to robbing, with exposed comb in heaps amongst the hives.

The complainant told us that she had endured stings, bees in the pool, bees in the washing, stung pets, and aggressive non-cooperation from the beekeeper over approximately 20 years, and is now selling up and finding somewhere away from bees to live.

Due to the irresponsible behaviour of this beekeeper, we have all gained a very poor reputation with the complainant and everyone over whom she has influence.

Don’t let this happen to you.  Consider your neighbours. Please!!  For all our sakes.

Bob Shaw

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Mid-Winter Swarming (Dinner)

At our May meeting, venues for our Mid-Winter Swarming dinner were proposed and discussed.  Consensus was reached, with the 83 Restaurant at Woden Tradesman’s Union Club being approved by those present at the meeting.

Four of our members, Lyn and Pat Sheils, Cec Mercer and Bob Shaw, partook of the lunch-time fare on Thursday 15^th May and all declared the venue to be a suitable place for the establishment of a colony and award of Empty Supers.

The cost of $15 per head, with 10% members discount and Seniors discount of 20%, was found to be quite reasonable and with bar facilities and tea and coffee available along with an extensive range of Chinese cuisine, roasts and vegies and desserts will, I think, suit almost everyone’s taste.

Names of those attending should be given to Lyn S 62862421 or Bob S 62540018 prior to the night to ensure suitable pheromone application will prevent attack of guard bees at hive entrance (club door).

Please Note

Dinner will be held on Tuesday night 1.7.2003,  7.00pm for 7.30pm.  Meet at the restaurant upstairs Woden Tradies Club, Launceston St, Phillip

Your name will be on the entry list at the front desk.

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Bees Jail Offenders

South African honeybees adopt a strict incarceration policy to control a troublesome hive parasite currently terrorizing their European cousins.

Small hive beetles (Aethina tumida), native to South Africa, have begun to cause havoc in US hives of European honeybees (Apis mellifera spp.). Beetle larvae feed on developing bees and their stores of pollen and honey.

With aggression and "nice teamwork" South African Cape honeybees (Apis mellifera capensis) apprehend and imprison the intruders, says Peter Neumann of the Martin Luther University in Halle, Germany.

Neumann and his colleagues watched the bees' hard-line tactics for 57 days.

"Small hive beetles are like tanks," says Neumann. The rounded beetles' tough armour makes them impervious to stings, a bee's normal response to harmful parasites and predators.  So worker bees hustle the beetles into cracks and corners, and take turns guarding them. They then seal the parasites in with fast-setting tree sap. The beetles starve to death.  If there are too many parasites to imprison permanently, guard bees hold the beetles long enough for their fellow bees to abscond and set up a hive elsewhere. "It gives them time to tell the queen: 'ok, we have to get out of here'," Neumann says.

European honeybees also collect and use tree sap as a sealant and can rout other parasites, but they allow small hive beetles to run riot. Neumann suspects that, having evolved in isolation from the parasite, they have simply not learned to corral the beetles and imprison them. "European colonies can cope with other parasites, so it's not as if they're lazy," he says.

Since arriving in the United States in around 1996, small hive beetles have spread across the Southeastern states. Last year they cost Florida beekeepers alone $3 million, according to Patti Elzen, an entomologist with the US Department of Agriculture in Weslaco, Texas. The beetles will probably overrun other warm parts of the United States, says Elzen.

Currently, insecticides are used to control small hive beetles in American beehives. Neumann's work may be a promising lead in the search for better alternatives, says Elzen. Breeding docile, honey-producing European honeybee strains that get tough on beetles could be an ideal natural control method.

But jailbird beetles may not be completely at the mercy of aggressive bees. Neumann's team observed four jailbreaks (all at night), two cases of beetles mating while incarcerated and one beetle eating its cell mate's body in the face of starvation. "Although there's no clear-cut evidence, these may represent survival tactics," says Neumann.

References:

Neumann, P. et al. Social encapsulation of beetle

parasites by Cape honeybee colonies.

 Naturwissenschaften (2001).

© Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2001     22 May 2001      Tom Clarke

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Strong Hives Mean More Flying Time

In summer I observed that our strong hive in the backyard started flying at dawn in half-light, whereas a weaker hive sitting next to it didn’t begin to fly until the sun was actually shining on it.  In autumn the strong hive flew while there was daylight.  Yesterday morning the temperature was 5 degrees and the bees from the strong hive were already flying at daylight.  The weaker hive did not start to fly for at least another hour and a half.  In the evening the stronger hive was able to continue for much longer. The stronger the hive the greater potential for gathering good amounts of nectar with more flying time.

I assume that a hive can begin to fly after daylight when there are enough bees to keep the brood chamber warm and this happens much earlier with a larger hive.  In the evening field bees will stop flying when they are needed to keep the brood temperature stable.

At the moment our hives appear to be feeding on one eucalypt across the road.  It is very noticeable that virtually all bees from three hives head off in the same direction whereas usually there are bees going in every direction.  With limited resources when they find a good source they certainly stick to it.

Pat Shiels

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Empty Super Story

Well I’ll be Blowed

We received a phone call from a rather distraught young woman who said her house was full of bees and she was really frightened.  A rush trip was made and when we arrived we were met in the driveway by a visibly shaken woman clutching the telephone, too afraid to go back into the house.  Part of her fear was for the very young kitten disporting itself chasing at least a hundred bees along the window.  Although fearing for its life she was too afraid to attempt a rescue.  To the accompaniment of many warnings to be careful I approached the window from the outside.  A brief inspection was enough to determine that the bees were in fact rather large blowflies.  Am I sure? Yes I am but when it was obvious the young woman didn’t share my confidence I went inside, opened the curtains, made an exaggerated performance of looking closely at each and every insect and returned the verdict, definitely still blowflies.

It turns out she had recently migrated to Canberra from that far-away country, North Queensland, where apparently flies don’t come in super sizes.  The lasagne she was cooking whilst leaving the door ajar for the kitten to come and go may have had something to do with every blowfly in South Canberra coming to visit.

We left a highly embarrassed young woman to the thankless job of cleaning a now burnt saucepan.  We think she finally believed us but we had to spray the “bees” before she would return to the house.

Lyn Shiels

The Empty Super Award will be presented at the Midwinter Dinner in July so the next newsletter will be your last chance to tell your story.  Send your entry to Lyn or Paul to have a chance to win this coveted award in 2003.

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More Bees in History

In the early 1900s, a farmer named Awad bin Laden lived near Tarim, eking out a living through odd jobs in rural communities near the family home, only on occasion holding down long-term employment. Simple survival dictated that every able-bodied person contributed to the family’s well-being, so while Awad worked elsewhere, his wife and other family members tended a small herd of goats and grew subsistence crops on a small plot of land – probably no larger than an acre in size – near the family home. Little information exists within the family today about this land. However it is thought that Awad’s ancestors had been granted it by the King of Yemen in recognition of their participation in the Yemeni struggle against the Turks.

In such a hot, dry climate it would have been all the family could do to coax their barley, maize, potatoes and wheat to harvest. Theirs was a hard and precarious existence and in this respect, little has changed in Yemen. The family’s largest source of income was from its honeybees. Bee-keeping had been a significant industry among rural agricultural communities in the Hadhramaut and Yemen for hundreds, possibly thousands, of years.  Honey and its many uses were mentioned in the Sumerian and Babelonian cuneiform texts, the Hittite code, the sacred writings of India, the Vedas and in the ancient writings of Egypt. The Old Testament book of Exodus refers to Palestine as ‘the land of milk and honey’ and in Greek and Roman mythology, honey was the food of kings and gods. Taxes were paid in honey, and many a Roman and Greek chef became famous for his honey recipies.

But it was in Egypt that honey first became fashionable and widely used. In ancient Egypt, honey was offered to the gods, buried in tombs with the dead to provide food in the hereafter, given to new-born babies to ward off evil spirits and bestow the gifts of health, poetic inspiration and eloquence. Almost all Egyptian medicines contained honey. Highly valued, honey was commonly used as a tribute or payment. Mead, a sweet wine made with honey, was considered the drink of the gods.

From the book Bin Laden – Behind the Mask of the Terrorist  by Adam Robinson, Mainstream, 2001.

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Confessions of an Amateur

Christmas had passed pleasantly and we were now in full holiday mode.  8^th of January there are storms around, with lightning and thunder but little rain reached the ground through the hot, dry air of the drought. Later we hear that lightning strikes had started a multitude of fires in remote areas of the Victorian alps.

At 9 o’clock at night on the 17th we sit on the patio enjoying a glass of Chardy, watching the red glow over the ridge to the west intensify when the first piece of burning bark falls out of the sky and hits the ground 30 metres in front of us.  Fire then breaks out across the river to our front and another wall of flame is visible a kilometre up river, coming our way.  10 o’clock and the local CFA (Country Fire Authority) captain roars in and convinces us to leave for the safety of the town.

Left behind is one lonely hive.  This hive was not with the others 5km away in a paddock of clover as it was still in quarantine.

18^th January, 5.30am, we move the hives from the clover paddock as flames get within 200 metres of them, and they are put in the middle of a ploughed paddock close to the town.  But it is too risky to attempt to retrieve the lone hive, as its paddock is now surrounded by fires on all sides.

On the 20^th, pre-dawn, we sneak down the road to the farm, trees still smouldering along the roadside.  We are met with a blackened paddock: the shack is untouched, surrounded by a small strip of green grass, the only green in sight, apart from the green of the shack’s Colorbond.  Nearby stands a white sentinel, hardly marked despite the blackened remains of grass surrounding it, still humming inside.  The danger has passed: there is nothing left to burn, so the hive is left undisturbed.

Although the devastating Canberra fires have died out, the Victorian fires continue their south-easterly march.  Fire reaches the edge of Benambra, but peters out on the adjacent dry bed of Lake Omeo – just as it did in the great fire of 1939 – and skirts the township proper and continues on its way towards the coast.  For three weeks the fire threatens to close in on the few square kilometres of farmland still unburnt in the small valley to the north of town.  But judicious back-burning, dedicated fire-fighting and a lot of luck, see this small area remain unburnt.  It is in this pocket that the evacuated hives sit in the middle of a plowed paddock.

By February 5^th it is apparent that the lone hive is going backwards rapidly, as there is obviously no food in the burnt out bush, so the hive is collected. The enroute stop at the CFA shed is cut short when it is realised that the hive had slipped open on the way in.  With a few angry bees still hanging on outside, it is then dropped off to join the other hives in the plowed paddock.

February 16^th, after a few days R&R back in Canberra, I return to Benambra.  Checking on the bees soon after arriving, I notice that the once lone hive has bees hanging around the ventilation holes in the lid.  Suspecting robbing of this weakened colony I check the entrance to find … shock!!  horror!! … it is blocked with an entrance closer.  Yes this colony had spent 11 days in the hottest part of the year, in an open paddock with no shade, locked up!!

The colony survived, but how?  There were quite a number of dead bees on the floor, especially near the entrance; but not terribly excessive,  as many would have died normally over an 11 day period. 

How did it survive with no access to water? What were those bees doing, hanging around the outside of the ventilation holes?  Were they acting as water-carriers, carrying water from the dam only 30 metres away and passing it through the wire mesh?  There would be no condensation inside this hive in this hot, dry climate to meet the colony’s need for water?

Once again, the bees survive despite the ministrations of the beekeeper.

Paul Hooper

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