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 – Bob Shaw Ph: 62540018
Our next meeting will be held on Wednesday 10th September at 7.30pm at
CIT Weston. Our guest speaker is Doug
Somerville, NSW Agriculture Apiary Officer, who will talk to us about the
management of bees in springtime.
The business section of the meeting is from 7.30 and Doug will speak from
8.00. There will be time for a cup of tea and chat after the meeting.
Spring is sprung. The recent rains are a great encouragement for all, not
only beekeepers, though for us it bodes well for the coming honey season.
B1 and B2 have made a successful scouting trip to the canola. No search
party required.
At our September meeting we will be discussing spring management in the
apiary with topics such as disease diagnosis. What? Again? (tedious but necessary)
Nutrition, swarm control, and spring feeding are also on the agenda.
Doug Somerville will be with us to lead discussion.
Please come along and contribute to our knowledge pool or gain from it.
Our hobby-pastime-profession is only as good as we make it. See you
there.
Bob Shaw
A number of items were discussed at the August meeting including the possibility of mounting a display at the Flower Shows held by the Garden Clubs each year and preparations for the Canberra Show. Unfortunately our speaker Dominic Staun was unable to attend due to business commitments but Roy Bray was able to step into the breach and gave an entertaining talk about the making of meads. Quite a few members went away inspired to have a try. Lyn Shiels spoke about some of her experiences collecting swarms and feral hives from gardens around Canberra.
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When I went to Swan Hill in 1959 Clem McIntyre’s father got me a honey house from Rainbow, a little town in the Wimmera, home town of Bob Menzies. I had about 25 eight frame hives. Between January 1959 and February 1964 I sold my honey locally in little 5lb rectangular tins with small pop top lids for 10 shillings. Later came the round paint pot tins embossed with blossom. I still have some of both these types of tins.
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Home at Swan Hill Caravan Park. |
Storage Caravan at Swan Hill Caravan Park. |
The bees were about 5 miles out of town, while I lived in the Caravan Park 500 yards from the Council Power House where I worked shifts. Slowly the honey built up from 4 gallon tins to a few 44 gallon drums, which I would take to Wangaratta to the Jachels.
All this time I had no assistance or advice except via reading. I did a 5 day bee school at Dookie College, Victoria where I increased my bee library on the cheap. Slowly I was learning how to manage the bees to do what I wanted them to do. We were getting nowhere and not moving the bees until I bought a few Caucasian queens from “Jachel”. They did well but the next season the cross breeds would meet you 500yds before the apiary. I went back to Italians from Langridge, a queen breeder. I did a Victorian Bee Field Day at Glenrowan via Rupert Sharp and Claude Ilton.
And so it went on until the Power House went up in flames on the 14th February
1964. By 23rd March I was in Canberra
with Space Track, the Tidbinbilla consortium, which became operational until
4th June 1964 when we began shift operation which gave us a month on and 6
days off. I never saw the bees during
this time until the summer of 64-65 when I went to Swan Hill, 500kms away,
and extracted them. More honey for
Jachels! I had a short wheel based
International truck for transport.
As for Canberra my bee future was ended. Jachel sold the honey house for me and I brought the bees to Echuca
and did nothing with them until I sold them at a sale.
In Canberra I was living at Hill End and Capital Hill Huts for two and
a half years. A Greek fellow wanted
me to take care of his three hives near the flagpole on Capital Hill while
he went home to Greece. So I was back
in bees, first with three hives, then six hives.
Later, sick of hostel living, I went out to Conwarra property and Bill
Flint, just below Tidbinbilla Tracking station, and worked on the property
and built the bees up to ten hives.
In 1970 I bought my first house and soon bought new material for 50 three deck hives. About 30 are still in the flat because in 1972 I bought a bee farm at Coolah, 10 acres and 60 ten frame hives (and heaps of boxes) for $10,000 but everything was run down.
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Swan Hill farm site. |
Farm at Coolah. |
I was in my glory days, every six days off shift I’d head to Coolah, any local bees were secondary. I had a 3 ton Austin with a boom loader and later bought a 5 ton Leyland truck but never had a bee box on it. Then came the 2 ton Dyna. Over time I sanded and nailed, cooked in paraffin and painted 50 three deck hives and looked after the bees (all 500km from home). Most of this work plus 10 chain of new fencing was done in 6 weeks of holidays. Over these years I had built up about sixty tins of honey and I took thirty to Mudgee and didn’t get paid until years after with Doug Somerville’s help.
Cec Mercer
By Our Man in Slovenia
Ljubljana is the ideal location for an international bee conference called "Beekeeping - A Way of Life". Slovenia has been an independent democratic republic for 12 years and Ljubljana is the same population as Canberra.
Like the grey carniolan bee that has been kept pure here for hundreds of years, the Slovenian people are friendly, quiet and industrious. Beekeeping and the products of the hive form a large part of Slovenian life. Every market has several stands selling honey, pollen, propolis, honey soap and cosmetics, medica medina vida (mead), medina liker (honey liqueur), and medina gjange (honey brandy). The products are beautifully labelled, packaged and presented. One market was even advertising a new product - medino pivo (honey beer)- served cold from the keg. There are 200 local beekeeping clubs in Slovenia and 150,000 colonies of bees producing an average of 22 kg of honey per year. Four in every 1000 Slovenians keep bees. According to a survey, the average beekeeper is male, approaching 65 years of age, manages 18 hives and is not an alcoholic. Traditionally, bee colonies are kept in single long boxes stacked in bee houses. The bee house keeps the colonies cool in summer and warm in winter. Mobile bee houses chase the honey flow. It is common practice for the front of each bee box to be identified by one of 600 standard brightly coloured paintings so the bees can find their own box. The beekeeper's biggest worry is varroa mite.
This worry about varroa appears to be worldwide with a large proportion of the academic and scientific papers directed at varroa and the residues in honey from various treatments of varroa. At the conference opening ceremony, the President of the Italian beekeepers club dropped a bombshell that an Italian beekeeper with 50 years experience had found a preventation for varroa. The preventative relied on the amount of bee-space in the hive and was greeted with some scepticism by participants.
The formal papers were presented in three parallel streams. Bruce White from NSWAg moderated a session on International Trade in the Beekeeping Industry, and also presented a paper on the Small Hive Beetle.
For me the expo was most interesting. Over 100 exhibitors of mainly beekeeping equipment covered acres of floorspace. The Melbourne Conference Centre manned a stand lobbying for Apimondia 2007 to be held in Melbourne. They would get the contract for the conference should Australia be successful. It was the only Australian stand and proved a focus point for the 20 or 30 Aussies in attendance. The 2007 conference venue was to be decided after I left. Another strong contender was Argentina.
All work and no play makes for a dull conference. Organisers ensured a full social program. There was a "meet the beekeepers night" at the Slovenian Beekeeping Centre, a Slovenian cultural evening and an Irish evening - Apimondia 2005 is to be in Ireland.
The Slovenian Beekeeping Centre was built a few years ago as the headquarters of the beekeeping associations. There are traditional bee hives on display, meeting rooms, beekeeping equipment for sale and accommodation available.
Dick Johnston
Judging at the Canberra Show.
"1 will
judge thee according to thy ways" Ezekiel 7:3
Honey Exhibits at Royal Canberra
Show
Honey
Your honey needs to have two qualities - aroma and taste. If you don't
have both of these, then thanks for coming but no thank you. In the last few
years, very few entries have been rejected on these grounds, a tribute to
our hardworking bees, flora and beekeepers. So, with these two qualities (carrying
50% of the marks) being a given, how do you get your honey to scream "Choose
me!" to the judges?
Treat your honey as sheep breeders treat their show rams, with lots of
close attention to detail. Take the frame (or two, if you are entering the
three jar classes) with as little smoke as possible - none for preference.
The bees don't enjoy this, you don't enjoy a sting or three, but you have
eliminated a common cause of judges' wrinkled noses, the smoky aroma that
seems to hang forever. Extract the honey using gentle methods. For example,
poke a hole in the cells and let the honey drain out slowly, filtering once
or twice, no more. Don't let it fall through the air as that is a prime cause
of bubbles in the honey. You can get the larger bubbles out easily enough,
but the micros will persist until you lose patience, heat the honey to let
them rise and lose most of the aroma and flavour. This regime is not what
you would do to extract 50 boxes, but we are not judging 50 boxes, only your
best.
Follow the instructions on the Show schedule regarding such criteria as
fill levels, types of jars, uniformity of sample. Give close attention to
jar cleanliness. If you want to keep honey from dripping on the inside of
the lid, put some Gladwrap under it, our highly experienced stewards will
quickly remove it before judging, with minimal loss of aroma. These are the
finicky things that can make the difference in a close judging. When two excellent
entries go right to the wire, the final decision sometimes has to be incredibly
picky.
Comb entries should feature your newest frame, with very even fill. A nicely
made frame box is very important. Make it months ahead so that stains or varnish
do not taint the sample or wrinkle judges' noses.
Wax
Cappings wax is the only one to use. When making block or mould wax, cool
it very slowly in a "slow" oven (like 90C). This will reduce cracking.
Polish your wax by all means, but remember that shaving off bits to tidy the
block stands out very clearly. Candles are tested for burning, so test drive
a few to ensure that your wicks are the appropriate thickness. Experiment
with unusual shapes, whether you are entering a block, a mould or candles.
If it doesn't come out right the first time, don't give up. Just melt it down
and try again, but remember that the quality of wax deteriorates each time
it is reworked.
Cooking
Your judges love this section (wonder why?). We are not merely cake Hoovers;
we also know how to cook. Pleeease don't just whack
up an entry and hope it will do; it probably won't. We applaud the efforts
of all who want to work outside their normal spheres. Just take the extra
step of doing it a number of times beforehand to get experience. As my old
drill master used to say "Practice makes permanent."
Finally …….
To our newer members, this is not the Sydney Easter. The emphasis in this competition is friendly, enjoyable learning. There are no cash prizes for that reason. We try not to reject entries out of hand; rather, we aim to show entrants how they can improve their product. Always in view is the knowledge that our products go to the consumer. Over the three years of competition, huge advances have been made in product presentation. This has an obvious commercial benefit to you, so join in and enjoy the fun.
Rob Gardiner RNCAS Honey Judge
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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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