Newsletter April 2009

Shropshire Beekeepers' Association

Newsletter : April 2009

1. Editor's Notes

Suddenly everything is happening at once. The bees are flying strongly and hope is springing eternal. We still need to be ready to feed our bees (1:1 syrup), since nectar is not yet plentiful, particularly if we want to encourage comb building (see Robert Swallow’s timely reminder below). On the wider stage, the government has, after extensive consultation, produced its strategy for the future of the health and welfare of beekeeping. A few points from this document are reported in item 3. As hobby beekeepers we must take on our share of responsibilities for the success of this strategy. As an Association we are tasked to support beekeepers, promote good practice, introduce newcomers into the joys of beekeeping and improve the skills of our active members. Our programme is designed to those ends. This month we have our last indoor meeting (April 8th, 7.30 pm at Shirehall) when John Holme will talk about ‘Beekeeping for a Living’ - a topic that should help us to focus on good practice. Then the following Saturday we have our first ‘Apiary Day’ of the season (Radbrook 2.30 pm) when we will see how to carry out a first inspection and consider the management of replacing old comb (weather permitting).

Speaking of the apiary, Brian Goodwin has run two very successful theory courses for interested newcomers during the earlier part of the year, so we now look likely to have a large number of beginners wanting to learn the practical side of the business. We therefore need up to 20 volunteers who can spare some time on alternate Wednesday evenings, beginning later this month, to show them the ropes. Please let Brian know if you can help.

Looking further ahead, you will know from the programme that Robert Swallow is arranging a ‘Disease Recognition Day’, which will be held at Shirehall on Saturday 13th June. Members of the CSL Inspection team will be helping us to identify the various conditions we might find in our hives, and telling us how best to deal with them. We will have an opportunity to inspect some frames with the less common, but potentially serious diseases, such as the foul broods. Since most of us are fortunately unfamiliar with them, the value of this opportunity is obvious. You will recognise that this training day fits well with the new strategy for helping beekeepers to help themselves. We expect applications for tickets to be heavy. Once the details are published, booking will be on a ‘first come first served’ basis, so don’t miss out!

2. The Importance of Fresh Foundation

During his talk to Shropshire Beekeepers on March 11th Geoff Critchley reminded us of the importance of always providing good fresh foundation for the bees to be able to work into good quality comb. Foundation bought in the previous season, although stored in a cool dark place, is sometimes found to have a white “bloom” on it, which the bees find discouraging. This can be removed and the aroma of the wax improved by placing the sheet on a flat surface and giving it a judicious waft of steam from a wallpaper stripper that has the plate removed from the end of the steam hose. The effect is immediate and very visible so any parts missed can be seen and re-treated.

Foundation should be fitted to frames so it is a loose fit in the slots in the side-bars otherwise when it expands buckling will take place. I find that the easiest way of trimming the edge is to use a steel rule and a craft knife. During the warmer parts of the season foundation is likely to buckle purely because of the temperature. This effect can be reduced by only adding new frames of foundation to an expanding colony as needed, for example after a nuc has been moved into a brood box, rather than completely filling it with frames of new foundation which then deteriorate because the bees are unable to draw the wax out due to constraints such as slow colony growth or poor nectar supply.

Because each pound of wax produced requires a nectar input that would otherwise produce five or six pounds of honey, it is important that adequate supplies of nectar are available, either from forage or sugar syrup provided by the beekeeper, if comb is to be adequately drawn. Generation of wax for comb not only carries the overhead of the internal chemistry of bees changing nectar into wax but also requires adequate warmth within the hive, which bees also have to create from nectar. If the supply of nectar is curtailed the result will be foundation partially drawn and very often holes where wax has been scavenged for use elsewhere. The inescapable fact is that when foundation is being drawn, a large portion of the nectar gathered will become foundation, not honey for harvest. The time of the season has to be considered as well. Bees, like many other creatures and plants make their assessment of the time of the season from night length rather than temperatures and their enthusiasm to draw comb tends to recede after the summer solstice. That behaviour is the reason why shook swarms and comb changes are more successful when carried out in the earlier part of the season. Incidentally, the same factor regulates egg-laying to a minimum in December, which then rises from that time onwards despite temperatures often getting lower.

It seems to me that the extra work needed with to carry out Bailey comb change or shook swarm early in the season will pay dividends to the beekeeper in terms of the removal of pathogens in old wax, the reduction of varroa mites (in the case of the shook swarm) and the invigoration of the colony due to so many more cells being available in the new comb for laying. This being done at the instigation of the beekeeper means that the comb is produced at a cost of sugar at 85p per kg instead of using nectar which we would otherwise sell in the form of honey at between three and four pounds per lb, plus there is more honey for harvest as the workforce is larger and healthier and is also in better condition to over-winter.
Robert Swallow, Apiary Manager

3. Healthy Bees: DEFRA’s 10yr Plan

Introduction
At the beginning of March the Government published its 10-year plan to improve the health of honeybees. While not containing anything startling or new, it does set out, in a clear and accessible form, a framework for safeguarding the future for our favourite insect. In particular it emphasises that this will only be achieved if we all play our part. There are no ‘magic bullets’ that will deal with the hazards that bees face, but together we can prevent and reverse what might otherwise be an inevitable decline. Below are some extracts from the document. The full text is available from the DEFRA website (click here.)

Objectives

To keep pests, diseases and other hazards to the lowest levels achievable;

To promote good standards of husbandry to minimise pest and diseases risks and contribute to sustaining honey bee populations – prevention is better than cure;

To encourage effective biosecurity to minimise risks from pests, diseases and undesirable species;

To ensure that sound science underpins bee health policy and its implementation; and

To get everyone to work together on bee health.

Background
The Plan first lays out the current challenges to honeybee health (AFB, EFB, varroa & its associated viruses) and further potential threats such as small hive beetle, tropilaelaps and the Asian hornet. The commercial importance of the honeybee, particularly for its role in pollination, is recorded and environmental concerns, e.g. the misuse of pesticides and the impact of climate change, are also recognised. The biggest organisational challenge to a bee-health strategy is that the 200-300 professional bee farmers are heavily outnumbered by more that 33,000 amateur beekeepers who must be drawn in to any co-ordinated plan if it is to be successful.

The Task for Beekeepers
For us individually this means taking personal responsibility for the health and welfare of our bees by:

Recognising pests and diseases and reporting any suspicion of notifiable pests or disease to our local Bee Inspector or the NBU;
Maintaining good husbandry and health practices to prevent and control the spread of pests and diseases;
Ensuring that our skills and competence levels are appropriate and up to date;
Signing up to BeeBase;
Complying with legislation on controlling pests and diseases, including standstill notices and import requirements;
Using and storing medications and treatments appropriately;
Maintaining records on the movement and location of our colonies within GB and making records available to our local Bee Inspector on request;
Seeking specialist advice as appropriate.

The Task for Associations
As far as SBKA and similar associations are concerned it means that we should:

Support beekeepers through education, information and advice;
Promote good beekeeping husbandry and practice;
Encourage beekeepers to achieve higher standards of beekeeping, including their disease recognition and management skills;
Raise beekeepers’ awareness of their legal obligations, including on bee imports and requirements on responsible storage, safe administration and recording of bee medications and other treatments;
Emphasise the benefits of signing up to BeeBase;
Work with government to achieve common objectives.
Encourage members of the public to become beekeepers, thus ensuring a widespread population of honeybees.

4. ‘The End of the Mystery’ of Disappearing Bees

In a recent documentary on France 5 TV 'The End of a Mystery' was announced. The 50-minute programme listed 4 reasons for the disappearance of bees [CCD?].

The first factor, fairly obviously, was that bees are being weakened by varroa and made susceptible to fungi and viruses.

Farming monoculture was blamed for a dramatic deterioration in food supplies for bees.

Allied to that was the use in agriculture of systemic insecticides, which poison the bees and

Perhaps more controversially, anti-varroa treatments were blamed for contaminating hives and colonies.

So there is a toxic chemical cocktail identified by the French Agency for Food Safety [AFSSA], and quoted by the programme makers. What was not in question in the programme was the value of bees to the survival of many plants and flowers; and the pollination of food crops.
The programme ends by suggesting that the dependence by the agricultural industry on chemicals affects biodiversity and mankind, and becomes more and more of a worry.

Reported by Bill Buchanan: Market Drayton

5. An Alternative View

In an article in the March 5th edition of The Economist (see the full story here) it was reported that the huge losses of bees in California, which triggered off the CCD scare, have surprisingly been reversed this year with a glut of available colonies for pollination in the almond groves. Of course this is related to the fact that the acreage of almonds being cultivated has been reduced compared to recent years, but nevertheless there does seem to have been something of a recovery in the bee population.

Meanwhile, the search for the factors involved in CCD goes on. Our own professor Ratnieks of Sussex University, who has worked on the Californian almond farms, has said that it is hard to pin down what has been causing honeybees to vanish. “People want it to be genetically modified crops, pollution, mobile-phone masts and pesticides, and it is almost certainly none of those.”

It is now increasingly being recognised that managed bees may need food supplements. In some places, a decline in the area of pasture land on which they can forage, the loss of weedy borders and the growth of crop monocultures mean it is hard for bees to find a wide enough range of pollen sources to obtain all their essential amino acids. In extreme cases they may not even find enough basic protein. So another factor in CCD may be that poor nutrition has weakened the bees’ immune systems, making them more vulnerable to viruses and other parasites. Feeding bees supplements, rather than relying on their ability to forage in the wild, costs time and money. Many beekeepers therefore try to avoid it. Anecdote suggests, however, that those who do fork out are finding that their colonies are far more resistant to CCD.

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