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Wellington Beekeepers Association Inc. Newsletter - August 98 |
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Meetings are held on second Monday each month (except January), at above venue July Meeting (AGM) PRESENT: Doug Purdie (Pres.), Frank Lindsay (Treas.), John Burnet (Sec.) and 26 members and visitors as listed in the attendance book. APOLOGIES: Pam McDowell, Andrew Yung, Bernie Cox, John Lock, Graham Lusty, Tony Hopkins, Marie & Chris Christoffel. NEW MEMBERS AND VISITORS: David Carlton (Michigan USA and currently Plimmerton). MINUTES OF PREVIOUS MEETING: Minutes of previous Annual General Meeting held 14 August 1997 were read and confirmed (Richard Hatfield/Wrae Duncan). PRESIDENT’S REPORT: President Doug Purdie’s report was read and accepted (John Burnet/Andrew Beach) TREASURER’S REPORT: Treasurer Frank Lindsay’s Income & Expenditure Statement and Balance Sheet for year ended 31 May 1998 were outlined to members. (Acceptance moved by Terry Moore, seconded by Ken Breden). ELECTION OF OFFICERS: SUBSCRIPTIONS: To be held at current level $20 (James Scott/Doug Purdie) B/L PAYOUT: $60 being 50% of standard hive cost (John Burnet/James Scott). Two claims have been received - one from a club member with two hives at Te Horo and another from a member with three hives at Otaki. Incoming committee to review the current maximum claim of five hives per member. WEB PAGE: James Scott circulated a proposal and outlined details to to set up an Internet Web Page for the Club. Annual cost $96 and anticipated benefits were discussed. Following a motion (May Larsen/Andrew Beach), members voted to support the proposal. MEAD COMPETITION: 15 entries were judged by Frank Lindsay and Richard Hatfield:
Winners Still : 1st : Bill Allan Meeting closed at 9:30 p.m. with supper. Waireka Honey Centre For a full range of Ecroyds Beekeeping Supplies Phone 0800-5BEEHIVE (0800-523344) We will trade Honey, Beeswax or Pollen for Gear Contact Marjorie or Kevin Kibby Same day shipping for orders placed by 10am SH1, RD 3, Palmerston North (24kms north of Foxton on SH1). Adult Worker Bee Stages Worker bees carry out almost all of the tasks inside the hive, and generally do so in a sequence related to their age that is called "division of labour". Many studies have built up a picture of this age-related pattern of work. Much of this pattern is due to the different times at which the glands used for feeding brood, secreting wax and producing enzymes to process honey mature.
About The Apiary The month before last a question was asked about how to remove ants from under the lids of hives. I tend to just squash them all with the hive tool, however I noticed the article in the American Bee Journal, the history section of 50 years ago. How To Keep Out Ants - To keep ants out from harbouring under the hive cover, shade boards and other spots, gather fresh handful of green walnut leaves, and spread them on top of the inner cover. Ants will leave at once and no more will bother if the leaves are renewed once in two or three weeks. Catnip will work too. Vern Bond, Kansas. For Bee Stings - After scraping off the sting, scrape raw Irish potato and apply as a poultice, renewing in about every five minutes and continue for twenty minutes. There will be no swelling and no itching the next day. This is also good for insect bits and burns. Mrs Witcher Hatcher, Oklahoma. Back To Normal After spending 6 weeks in the UK (incidentally the weather was warm and showery - like an extended NZ autumn) we had a week of cleaning up then went to the far north for the National Beekeepers conference. Got rained out (roads were flooded so couldn’t do any tourist things), then it was back to a fine warm Wellington. Very unusual winter we are having with warm, wet fronts coming from the north. I'm told some hives still have drones so this means they have kept rearing brood all through. The other day I took the opportunity to remove some now dry super off the tops of an nearby apiary. When I looked under the feeder, some hives were wet inside and other were very dry. One I tilted a little more forward and the others I put a little piece of stick between the top of the super and the feeder to allow a little more air to flow. The bees were right up into the top super and were very active. I was doing this in my normal clothes and although the bees were flying well, (bringing in lots of pollen), I forgot to look inside the hives to see what was going on. Normally at this time of the year, the queen has just started laying again in a patch about the size of your fist. With all this warm weather, the size of the brood nest could be considerable larger. As there is very little flowering (I noticed some Eucalyptus in flower coming home), the bees will be using up their winter stores a little sooner than usual. So at the end of the month it would pay (on a nice warm day) to check your hives for stores. Don't pull the frames out and disturb the brood nest, just peer down into the hive and see that there is honey in most of the outside frames. You can heft the hive to check the weight but this is unreliable, as the weight could be brood and pollen, not honey. But it does give you a good reference if you have a number of hives. Any light ones should be investigated more fully. The real danger period is October/ November when hives are really into brood rearing and using up to 0.5 kg of honey per day. In the mean time, make sure they still have a minimum of three frames of honey. Any less than this and you will have to feed warm sugar syrup (thick as possible) until the bush flow starts. Start making up new gear ready for the coming season and refresh yourself by reading a few bee books at night beside the fire. Make up a plan and mark it on the calender, spring check, then once the bees are expanding, check every 9 days for signs of queen cells. New beekeepers should keep a notebook to jot down what's flowering in your area and the date, what bees are visiting and what colour pollen is coming in. This way you get to know your area and can then start to anticipate when your main honey flows are and act accordingly. Frank Lindsay Producing Populous Colonies A General Guide to Beekeepers in the Wellington DistrictThe following table provides an indication of how an average hive in the Wellington region should build up during the spring in preparation for the main honey flow, which generally occurs in early December.
Note (1) Crowded conditions – Demaree if required. Extract or add supers up to January 8th then allow bees to complete and seal combs. The above data is a general average, and would be exceeded in some areas with a good flow, such as Karori and parts of the Hutt Valley. Frank Lindsay Colony Preparation for the Honeyflow A calendar of events for hives being managed to maximise honey collection capability. Weekly Periods
Frank Lindsay Honey Production Depends on Colony Size
Practical Beekeeping in NZ – Andrew Matheson Blue Mountains Apiaries
Free supply at meetings. Please phone Richard on 528 7780 for availability Bee Brood Stages The following table provides an indication of the length of time that different type of brood spend in each of the stages during their development into adults.
During the lava stages, each bee will moult four times (about once per day), before the cell is sealed. They will moult once inside the sealed cell, and again for the sixth time when emerging as an adult. Drones that do not mate usually live for about three to four weeks in spring and mid-summer, though this can be up to about three months in autumn. With the shortening days and reducing food supplies in autumn, drones are usually expelled from the hive before winter. New drones are reared again in the spring. A plentiful supply of drones in spring and summer is very important to the survival of the honey bee species and beekeepers are wrong to think of them as being unnecessary to the colony. Squashing drone brood and culling drone comb are particularly futile actions, as bees expend a lot of effort to repair the damage. Colonies in hives with lots of drone comb do not produce less surplus honey than those with no drone comb, and bees seem to require a certain percentage of drone brood. Practical Beekeeping in NZ – Andrew Matheson Wellington Beekeepers on the Internet Approval was given at the AGM last month for the establishment of an Internet site for the Wellington Beekeepers Association. This will be used to provide information to members and to the wider audience of people interested in beekeeping in Wellington, New Zealand and internationally. The Wellington City Council provide a free service for local non-profit groups to use its computers to hold such pages, though the creation and updating of the information needs to be done by club members. James Scott is currently preparing a series of pages that explain the club to its members and the rest of the world. An address has been registered, and so you should soon be able to find us on: Camp Rangi - Buzz Weekend For those who have enrolled for the forthcoming Buzz Weekend. Details are:
The course is fully booked, so it should be a really interesting weekend for all. You should have received instructions by now. Don’t forget to bring a special hat for the Saturday night party. Subscriptions Subscriptions, at $20.00 for the 1998/99 year are now due. Please complete the membership form included last month, and send to the treasurer, Frank Lindsay. You will not receive next month’s magazine if your subscription is not paid by the end of August. Future Meetings Our secretary, John Burnet, is currently planning some interesting sessions for this year. Please mark these dates in your diary and come along. For Sale
Don’t forget when selling any used hive gear, the seller must inform MAF Palmerston North, so it can be tracked in the case of an exotic disease outbreak. Purchasers should sign the form supplied by MAF. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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