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)
November 2001
Our next meeting will be held on Wednesday 14th
November at 7.30pm, at CIT Weston. Planning for the Canberra Show is among
items for discussion. As usual there will be time for a cup of tea or coffee
and an informal chat.
If anyone hasn’t noticed yet swarming season is
well and truly upon us. I took 8
calls the other day and Roy tells me it has been just as busy on the north
side. Most calls are for bee swarms from feral colonies
on public land.
I ask beekeepers to be vigilant with their hives
to prevent swarming as feral bees are fast becoming a major problem for
disease control and to the public.
On a lighter note the planning for our field day
is progressing well. Speakers are
organised, posters are going up all over town and the display hives are
ready. However we are still short
of a few volunteers, the more the merrier as this makes the workload on
the individuals a lot less and everyone gets to listen to the speakers.
David Lillis
The
swarm season seems to be in full swing and many members are kept busy collecting
swarms around town. Some are easy to collect while others are definitely
of the delinquent persuasion. These
produce some of our best Empty Super stories every year. Don’t forget to tell your story to the editor
(in strictest confidence of course).
This
means that there are two important things to do on Saturday, November 10th.
One is to register a vote for our favourite federal
politicians and the other is to attend the Canberra Beekeepers Field Day
at the Weston CIT campus.
The Field Day is being organised by our Association.
Presentations start at 10 am and activities will continue until mid-afternoon. We will be able to get to the polling booths before 10 o’clock or
later in the afternoon.
Seasonal management of bees will be reviewed,
but the emphasis in this field day will be on the detection, management
and avoidance of bee diseases in the hive.
Well-known and respected members of the wider
beekeeping fraternity will give formal presentations and practical demonstrations
during the day. Presenters will
include:
Doug Somerville,
Beekeeping Adviser, Goulburn
Dr Michael Hornitzky,
Senior Research Scientist
Mick Rankmore,
Regulatory Specialist (Apiaries)
Greg Roberts,
State Pres., NSW Apiarists Assn
Neil Gow,
ACT Beekeeper
After presentations and discussions on bee diseases
occurring in Australia there will be a practical demonstration of the identification
of the more serious diseases, particularly American Foul Brood, in active
infected hives.
Dick Johnston will also provide an update on the
ACT Government policy on Beekeeping in the ACT, including the latest on treatment of AFB-infected apiary materials
in the ACT.
In the last couple of weeks I have
had the pleasure of sharing my enthusiasm for bees and beekeeping with two
groups of charming older people at Woden Community Service groups. Pat and I took along a display box of bees,
a hive box, base and lid, a feral hive and various other bits and pieces
and spent a very pleasant hour talking about bees and beekeeping and answering
questions. Some people had a family
history of beekeeping and already knew a great deal about it while for others
it was a whole new area. I’m always
surprised at the variety of knowledge and the questions asked at the different
groups we visit.
For anyone who has a bit of time available
this is a great way to spread knowledge, understanding and enthusiasm for
our flying friends. Many groups
such as Scouts, Guides, and schools would welcome an offer to bring a few
bees and have a chat. The Association
has a display box that is available to members for talks and also pictures
that could be used. I find that
an empty hive with frames and queen excluder, a queen mailing cage, and
small pieces of wax that can be handled and examined are great to take along
as well. So contact some of your local groups and ask
if they’d like a visit and give it a go. I guarantee you will find an attentive
and appreciative audience.
Lyn Shiels
Worth a Try? 
Problem:
You take the lid off a bucket of honey to find a thin layer of scum
(bubbles, tiny bee bits and pollen) across the surface of the honey. You would like to remove the scum before tipping
the honey through a fine filter cloth into your honey dispensing tank.
Solution:
You could ladle off the scum – but that is slow, cumbersome and inefficient.
Why not try this: Lay a single sheet of newspaper across the
surface of the scum and press lightly to ensure it is in contact with the
scum. Then lift the sheet of paper off.
Voila! The scum layer is
removed – clinging to the paper. It
works a treat for layers up to around 3mm thick.
PS:
Don’t be in a rush to remove the layer of scum that settles on top
of the honey in your honey dispensing tank after your final fine filtering. That layer helps to retain the aromas that
give your honey its attractive individuality.
H039
I was assembling lids and bases recently
when I realised that I had run out of lid nails. On arrival at Dick’s at 5.15pm, I found that
he had none; he helpfully suggested that I could pick up some Flat Nails
at the hardware store. I got to
Magnet Mart at 5.36pm, 6 minutes too late.
A quick dash down the Parkway got me to Bunnings and the prize –
a pack of flats. I took them home ready to do the job. The lid frames had no ventilation holes!
Rob Gardiner
Recently I played host to a group of OTEN students
and teachers who were visiting the region on a beekeeping field trip.
The teachers Rosie Stern and Bruce White invited
me to join them in looking at Des Cannon’s and the Bingley’s operations.
Both plants were flat chat extracting honey.
Des talked about how everything operated and the
cost of setting up. At the Bingley’s
things were similar but on a larger scale.
On the road Bruce pointed out the different types
of eucalypts around. He said because
of the altitude the same species could be found in other parts of the state
such as Bathurst.
After lunch I grabbed a smoker and hive tool and
we moved on to my apiary at Tuggeranong Homestead. The students were very keen to see bees and
maybe a queen.
I was a little apprehensive only having a smoker
for protection but Bruce reassured everyone. With Bruce’s skill it didn’t take long to find a queen and this
impressed the group.
I also had a suspect AFB hive which I asked Bruce
to inspect. Being able to experience
these things was a big highlight for the students. Sadly Bruce advised me
to destroy the hive A.S.A.P.
From there we moved on to Dick Johnson’s place.
Dick set up a display of equipment needed for beginning in beekeeping
and explained its functions as well as the cost.
We looked over his hives and the layout of the backyard for beekeeping.
Finally Dick put on light refreshments and opened the shop for anyone wishing
to buy or just browse. A big thanks to Dick for his hospitality.
Rosy gave me plenty of information about OTEN
Courses and Bruce said he’d be keen to speak at one of our meetings next
year.
A good day was had by all and I thank Rosie and
Bruce for including our association in the group.
David Lillis
Recently I collected a queen from Richard and
was unable to put her in the hive that I intended so I stole a couple of
frames of brood and nurse bees from a strong hive and put the queen in a
nucleus box with them until she could be placed in her permanent home. There
were no field bees because they had returned to their original home but
the queen was surviving with her band of stolen helpers and honey.
Several days later I collected a small swarm and
decided to use it to build up bee numbers in a small single box hive nearby.
I found the queen in the swarm, killed her and prepared to unite
the swarm with the hive. A sheet of paper was spread out and the bees
dumped in a top box leaving a small gap for access until nightfall.
A little later we noticed some extra activity
around these two hives. Investigation showed that there were now plenty
of bees coming and going from the nucleus.
The next day examination showed that the queen was fine and now had
a bevy of field workers going to and fro.
About half the workers from the queenless swarm had opted to join
the nucleus rather than the home I had planned for them.
There were a few dead bees outside the entrance but the takeover
or adoption had apparently taken place with very little bloodshed.
The concerns that many Canberra families have
when a bee swarm comes into their garden or another inconvenient place are
not new. The Sydney Mail reported in November 1893 that a swarm “alighted
in Sussex Street, much to the annoyance of timid people and wonder of the
curious.” As the people of Sydney a century or so back many people today
regard the activity of bees with wonder once their initial fears are allayed.
The same edition reported a meeting at the Technical
College where “a good deal of bee lore was gone into” Amateur beekeepers
were being encouraged to attend these meetings where “They would then come
in touch with some of the oldest and most experienced beekeepers in the
colonies. Many practical hints and
wrinkles are always to be picked up.” Sounds
a lot like our meetings but I’m not so sure about picking up any wrinkles
from Cec, Herb or our other experienced beekeepers.
Argument was also raging about whether Bowral
was too severe a climate in which to keep bees and a committee had been
formed to study the matter.
If you have ideas and suggestions to make our
stall at the show more interesting please come along to this month’s meeting
and share your ideas. Richard has kindly donated 10 honeybear plastic jars
to make tasting more hygienic and easier to manage. Thanks Dick. The old
Honeyland stand is at David’s and will need some modification before we
are able to use it.
It
has been 150 years since Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth, on the 30th October
1851, recorded in his journal his concept of freely hanging frames in a
bee box. Langstroth was only one of many beekeepers
who had sought the means whereby individual combs within a hive could be
handled, examined, removed, or otherwise manipulated in the management of
the hive.
Managing hives and extracting honey had previously
been both difficult and destructive of comb and bees. Colonies of bees were kept in hollow logs or
simple boxes and they filled the cavities with roughly parallel combs attached
to the tops and sides of their accommodation. Removing comb for examination
or honey extraction involved destruction of much of the comb. The Swiss investigator Huber had built a series
of frames with comb in each one, hinged together so as to be opened like
a book. Langstroth and others tried
to emulate this design, but without practical success.
But it was Langstroth’s discovery of the concept
of “bee-space” that led to his successful design of the removable comb frame
that revolutionised beekeeping. He
found that the bees would not fill in a gap between a frame and the walls
or cover of a hive if that gap was approximately 3/8 inch.
Langstroth could not put his theories into practice
straight away because the North American winter was beginning. However, he drew sketches and wrote descriptions
of his frames and, being totally certain of his theories, he spent the winter
preparing materials to his revolutionary specifications in order to change
all his simple box hives over to removable frame hives the following season.
The rest is history. So successful were removable frames for ease of use, efficiency
and effectiveness in honey production, breeding and disease management,
that removable frames have become the norm; even legally compulsory in many
countries, including Australia.
Paul Hooper
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BEEKEEPING FIELD DAY School of Horticulture, Canberra Institute of Technology Heysen Street, Weston, ACT 2607 10 am, Saturday 10th November 2001 |
|
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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