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)
March 2002
Our next meeting will be held on Wednesday 13th
March at 7.30pm, at CIT Weston. The
Annual General Meeting will be followed by the usual monthly meeting. Autumn shutdown procedures is the main subject
on the agenda.
Hi Members. Doesn’t time fly like a bee’s life cycle! Yes, the AGM is upon us again.
Looking back over last year’s notes, I can only say that we just can’t stop improving. We added the Anzac Day Picnic to our social calendar as well as improving on the other events. At the dinner the “Empty Super” award was won by an old favourite, Cec Mercer. Thanks to all our guest speakers throughout the year who contributed to the success of our meetings.
For me, the biggest highlight of the year was hosting the beekeeping field day in November. The feedback from that event has been tremendous.
My thanks to Bindaree Bee Supplies for their support during the year.
Our Canberra Show exhibition, like the association, just keeps on getting better. Thanks to our stewards, Lyn and Pat Shiels, and everyone else who volunteered their time to make the display a success. The highlight being invited to set up our display at the Cowra Show in September by one of their show officials.
Last, but not least, a big thanks to the committee, their hard work and time contributing dearly to the smooth running of the association.
On that note I look forward to seeing everyone at the next meeting to welcome in the new committee and lend it your support.
David Lillis
The Beekeepers Association of the ACT promotes beekeeping in the ACT and surrounding districts. It is proposed that practical demonstrations be held to assist those new to the hobby, those wishing to learn new ideas and those wishing to share their own ideas. Subject matters include:
* Identifying
the castes of bees including finding the queen.
* Recognising the contents of a hive, including various stages of brood development.
* The pros and cons of queen excluders and how to make the best use of these.
* The benefits of requeening hives and how to successfully requeen a hive.
* Identification of bee diseases, how to minimise the risk of infection and corrective treatment.
* Methods of removing honey supers. Extracting, filtering and storing honey. Storing sticky frames over winter.
* Obtaining equipment, constructing frames, embedding foundation, how to extend the life of your equipment.
* How
to capture bee swarms.
* Preventing swarming.
* Sources of nectar.
* Moving hives.
* Shutting down hives for winter, including what to took for at an Autumn inspection.
* When
and how to feed bees over winter.
Please contact Dick Johnston by email on bindaree.bee@bigpond.com or by telephone on 6281 2111 if you are interested in attending these practical demonstrations. Please also advise any other matters you wish to discuss or see demonstrated.
It is proposed to hold demonstrations one afternoon
each month and demonstrate matters relevant to the season.
If you are interested please indicate your preference for a Saturday or Sunday.
Mark
Hosking
Secretary
At the February meeting our treasurer Graham Turner raised the issue evident from the financial statement for the year 2001 that the excess of expenditure over income has increased to an extend that indicates that unless something is done the Association will this year find its operating account reduced to zero and need to begin to use its small “emergency” term deposit for expenses and in the longer term may cease to be financially viable.
The 2001 deficit included a significant new expense due to the popularly successful Field Day held at CIT Weston, however other standing expenses like insurance have continued to rise in recent years while income from memberships has fallen. It was pointed out at the meeting that when our public liability insurance falls due in October 2002 it may well involve an increase beyond our means. Most expenditure items, such as insurance premiums, are not elective and cannot be practically reduced or eliminated.
Several aspects of the issue were considered:
· Fees. Graham indicated that a modest fee increase of $10 from the present $25 to a proposed $35 per year would avoid a deficit in 2002 (if membership remained similar to 2001). This would be subject to approval by members at the AGM. Whilst this appears to be a good simple solution, its weaknesses are that it may be opposed by members, or membership may drop significantly as a result, or insurance expenses may rise far in excess of normal cost of living rises.
· Reduce newsletter expenses. The newsletter, apart from postage and some stationery, is already produced by volunteers without printing cost. It is also emailed where possible. Basically reduction means less editions. Those present felt that the monthly newsletter is a significant part of the Association and would reduce the attractiveness and usefulness of the Association. Increasing advertising revenue was discussed but the newsletter has a limited circulation and is not attractive to advertisers solely as a commercial decision. Limiting access to the newsletter strictly to members, that is restricting its current public availability through Bindaree Bee’s web site, was considered but issues raised relating to such limitation made that appear impracticable. Also Bindaree supports the newsletter financially and the current inter-relationship seems a fair balance.
· Increase Membership Numbers. This would increase income without significantly increasing expenditure. But how do we achieve increased membership? Regular monthly activities were suggested as a way of attracting members. What do you think would be successful?
Please think on these issues and have your say. Come to the AGM or send your ideas to Lyn for inclusion in the newsletter.
Derek Butler
Once again volunteers at the stall at the Canberra Show were kept busy answering questions and showing display items to visitors.
We felt that we had more visitors than last year and people seemed to stay longer. This was mainly due to a great team of friendly volunteers who were always ready to chat and answer questions. The highlights were the display box with marked queen and the honey tasting and sales as well as the ready availability of information in oral and printed form.
The Apiculture Exhibition also created a lot of interest and the increase in the number of exhibitors and classes was pleasing. Rob will be talking about the exhibits in detail in his article. Congratulations to all winners, especially Bob Shaw who again won Most Successful Exhibitor.
Thank
you to everyone who came along and acted as explainers. Having someone available for a friendly chat
is the most important factor in the success of our stall. Thank you especially to Cec Mercer and Peter
Macnicol for their help setting up on Thursday and collecting and packing
away on Monday and to Julia McCarron- Benson for again providing Beekeeping
Barbie. Thanks also to Cec for providing
the bees for our display boxes and to everyone who provided a jar of honey
for tasting. We had a great variety
of types and the contrast between them was of great interest to patrons.
Dick Johnston provided the demonstration hive and extractor that created so much interest. Bindaree and Ridapest Pest Control also supported the Show Society by sponsoring the Apiculture section. Thank you to both Dick from Bindaree and Les LeFevre from Ridapest.
A special thank you to Bruce Fragar who came down from Narromine to bring cattle and entered his honey in the show. Bruce adopted us and spent many hours talking to patrons about bees and beekeeping and was a great asset to our stall.
Lyn Shiels
The judges and stewards were gratified beyond their most ambitious aspirations by the quality of this year’s show entries. The improvement in standards that has been achieved in only three years of competition is remarkable, and many entries approached top interstate levels of presentation. With attention to a few refinements, we anticipate a Canberra entrant scooping the pool at the Sydney Easter Show in the not too distant future!
Amongst the main achievements this year were:
·
Many new classes, including, Granulated Honey, Mead,
Chunk Honey, Frame Honey, Beeswax, Candles, and Schools Cookery;
·
Increased numbers of entries in the original classes, as well as
large numbers in the new classes; we attracted entries from as far afield
as Narromine this year!
·
Greatly improved presentation standards across the board, leading to displays which matched larger states
in professionalism and aesthetics; we were particularly impressed by the
ingenuity of frame honey display cases;
·
Improved speed and efficiency in judging, due to the availability
of the new judging resources kit, endowed by the ACT Beekeepers Association;
·
Enhanced Public Relations and Education,
due to the presentation
of demonstration judging sessions twice daily throughout the show.
These attracted lively interest, including the overview of local
expert Neil Bingley. The judges and stewards considered that they presented
impressively in their catering standard outfits of lab coats and hats.
Notes
were made of areas for further development for next year’s show entrants.
These included:
·
Eradication of cloudiness and impurities in liquid honey, due
to problems of bubbles and filtering;
·
Avoidance of over smoking, which affects flavour adversely;
·
Attention
to fill levels;
·
Attention
to jar quality and cleanliness,
including labels placement;
·
Attention
to standardisation of lids and jars
in all classes, including cookery;
·
New cookery classes will be introduced next year.
The judges offer their warm congratulations to “King Bee” Robert Shaw, winner of the “Most Successful Exhibitor” Ribbon. The point scores for place winners are as follows:
1st Place: Robert Shaw with 20 points.
Equal 2nd Place: Cec Mercer and Paul
Helliwell with
15 points.
4th Place: Richard Johnston with 14 points.
5th Place: Jenny Pearce with 12 points.
6th Place: Bruce Fragar of Narromine with 10 points.
Equal 7th Place: Peter Macnicol and
Dominic Staun:
with 3 points.
Judge Margaret Gardiner is off to the Royal Highland Show in Scotland in June, where she will be acting steward on the Honey Stand. She will pick the brains of more experienced judges in order to bring you more knowledge to further enhance Canberra Show standards next year.
Thanks to everybody who participated so generously in this year’s outstanding show!
Robert and Margaret Gardiner
and Judy Burgess
1st – Robert Shaw
2nd – Bruce Fragar
3rd – Cec Mercer
1st – Cec Mercer and Bruce Fragar
3rd – Robert Shaw
1st – Cec Mercer
2nd – Paul Helliwell
3rd – Richard Johnston
1st – Robert Shaw
2nd – Paul Helliwell and Bruce Fragar
1st – Peter Macnicol and Richard Johnston
3rd – Robert Shaw
1st – Bruce Fragar
2nd – Cec Mercer
3rd – Robert Shaw
1st – Robert Shaw
2nd – Paul Helliwell
3rd – Cec Mercer
1st – Robert Shaw
2nd – Richard Johnston
3rd – Jenny Pearce
1st – Jenny Pearce
2nd – Richard Johnston
3rd – Cecil Mercer
1st – Jenny Pearce
1st – Jenny Pearce
2nd – Robert Shaw
1st – Jenny Pearce
2nd – Robert Shaw
1st – Richard Johnston and Dominic Staun
1st – Paul Helliwell
2nd – Cecil Mercer
3rd – Richard Johnston
1st – Jack Vening and Ben Watson
2nd – Megan Sillis and Ellie Stanley and Alana Inwards
1st – Paul Helliwell
2nd – Cec Mercer
1st – Paul Helliwell
2nd – Richard Johnston
In
addition 17 children from the School Age Care Program at Garran Primary
School entered in the dipped candles section. It was decided to judge these
separately from the other entries in the section.
1st Samantha and Vanessa
2nd Kathryn and Arisha
3rd Rachel and Soumya
All other children were awarded an encouragement award praising their
effort.
A hive site is available near Tharwa for five or six hives. Interested people should contact Louise and Rodney Fish on 6235 0139
Worth a Try?
Pssst! Wanna buy a cheap solar wax melter?
When
it comes to rendering beeswax, nothing works as well as a solar wax melter.
Solar melters are commercially available and there are numerous plans
around from which you can make your own. However, there is no need for
an amateur beekeeper with a few hives to spend more than a couple of dollars
on making an effective solar wax melter. Such a melter can be used to
melt down and recover the wax in cappings, burr comb and comb scrapings
or pieces.
The basic elements of this small solar wax melter are a polystyrene box and a pane of glass. Second hand polystyrene boxes are freely available (if you haven’t already got one in your shed) from many shops, as they are commonly used for bulk packaging. A suitable pane of glass is normally available from re-cyclers (eg Revolve at Mugga Lane or Belconnen waste disposal centres) for $1 to $5.
To assemble: .… Place the glass on top of the box.
Further development is limited only by your imagination. The melter photographed above has been tilted towards the sun with a house brick. Inside it has a $3 chip frying basket hooked over a 5 litre icecream bucket ($0). The basket is lined with a Chux Superwipe as a filter paper and is filled with the cappings (compressed by hand) from about 12 extracted frames. This setup has produced some lovely clean wax blocks.
The next improvement to this melter will be an internal lining of aluminium sheet ($1 from Revolve) painted black. This will further increase heat absorption and melter effectiveness.
Hint: Rinse honey from the cappings and comb with water before melting. Put a little clean water in the bottom of the wax collector (icecream bucket). This water will dissolve / retain any remaining honey or other contaminants. Once the cappings are melted and the wax solidifies, remove the water from the collector, rinse the bottom of the wax block and re-melt the clean wax in a suitable mould (a 2 litre icecream container?) or pouring jug.
H039
Beeswax Product of the Week
Note: A prize of
one earcandle will be presented to the first member
to email the Editor with the generic name of this
week’s mystery product.
|
Tentative Timetable for 2002 Activities Mar 13th AGM and Autumn Shutdown (Organiser: David
Lillis) |
Possible Additional Weekend Activities: Mid Winter Madness Picnic in June (Organiser: Lyn Shiels) Hive Crawl in July or August Trip to Sutherland to Council Sponsored
Centre.
|
|
Ideas Welcome. Members’ ideas and input into our plans for the coming year are welcome. Come along to the next meeting and share your ideas. |
Bill Stratton of the Southern Tablelands branch of the New South Wales Apiarists Association has advised that the next meeting of the branch will be held on Friday 8th of March at the RSL Club in Queanbeyan at 7.00 pm. All beekeepers, big and small, commercial or hobbyist, are welcome. Policy on American Foulbrood disease will be discussed at the meeting.
|
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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