Meetings are held on second Monday each month (except January), at above venue

PRESENT: Richard Hatfield (Pres.), Mary-Ann Lindsay (Treas.) John Burnet (Sec.) and 30 members and visitors as listed in the attendance book.

APOLOGIES: Cliff Hulston, John Robson, Graham Lusty, David Park, Les Solomon, Marie Christofel, Bill Allan, Fred & Robert Thomson, Barbara Kerr, Max Aston, Ray Baker.

MINUTES OF PREVIOUS MEETING: Minutes of meeting held 12 April were read and confirmed.

MATTERS ARISING: At a members request wasp tunnels and baits were further discussed. Frank Lindsay mentioned wasp mating flights were currently occurring. Wasp nests in the ground should be destroyed using petrol or diesel (this must not be ignited - the fumes will kill the wasps and Richard related a personal experience to emphasis this.)

CORRESPONDENCE: Advice received from local branch of NBA detailing forthcoming remit meeting to be held on Mon 17 May in Wanganui.

TREASURER’S REPORT: Balances as at 31 March 1999 - Working Account $1,882.27, Goal Accounts $1714.41 & $3,035.42.

GENERAL BUSINESS:

Mead competition will be held in August due to absence of judges in July. Three classes - dry, sweet, sparkling. Only other rules - mead must be derived from honey. Mead to be presented in clear pressurised glass 750 ml. bottles. Green glass allowed for sparkling mead. Judges palette is final. Judging criteria - clarity, no yeast taste, no high tannin content, no sediment, no fortification. Flavour must "burst in the mouth".

Dave Coulton circulated a photograph taken in Waterford, Michigan in the 1920’s showing two smiling young girls without any protective clothing, covered in bees seated beside a hive.

Frank Lindsay recommended the Club purchase for its library "Breeding Super Bees" by Steve Taber. Price USD4.99 considered a bargain despite the book being several years old. Richard Hatfield will arrange purchase with his next order from AI Root.

Ivan Pedersen demonstrated how used aluminium sheet available from offset printers could be folded and fitted to a standard hive roof to make a waterproof cover.

Seasonal Management - drones are now being evicted (indicating onset of winter) however bees were still harvesting nectar in some areas.

DECA - (Disease Elimination Conformity Agreement) Frank Lindsay described in detail the new DECA questionnaire currently being circulated to all registered beekeepers by AgriQual. Also discussed were various diseases and threats to beekeeping such as European Foulbrood and the varroa and tracheal mite also border control techniques.

Meeting closed at 9:00 p.m. with supper.

• 2 ½ cups raw wheatgerm
• 1 cup coarse bran
• ½ cup chopped walnuts
• ½ cup shredded coconut
• ½ cup lecithin of sunflower oil
• 2 cups rolled oats
• 1 cup rye or wheatflakes
• ½ cup sunflower seeds
• ¼ cup sesame seeds
• ¼ cup blackstrap molasses
• ¼ cup honey

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl until the lecithin/sunflower oil, molasses, and honey are evenly distributed. Pour into a large baking dish and toast in a pre-heated oven at 170oC for 15 mins or until granola is dry and crisp. Stir while baking for an evenly toasted mixture.

There is a lot of debate raging at present on the safety and desirability or otherwise of genetically modified organisms (GMO), and some of this is important to the beekeeping industry. It seems that some buyers require that their suppliers certify that the produce is 100% free of GMO products, but this is virtually impossible for beekeepers.

Bees collect nectar and pollen from a wide area, and though nectar does not carry any genetic material so is not capable of genetic modification, it is likely that there may be small amounts of GMO pollen present in the honey should any such plants be growing in the foraging area. Beekeepers will thus become the unwitting victims of other industries attempts to introduce unwanted change into the landscape.

This issue is important, and everyone should make the effort to become informed on it and contribute to the debate. Once GMOs are released and in general use, it will be impossible to remove them again.

Well winter has finally arrived with last weekend’s fall of snow around the mountains. Hasn’t it been a lovely warm autumn?

It has been quite surprising to still see drones flying from some hives during the middle of the day. This is usually a sign of a queenless hive, but on investigation, the hives concerned have each been found to be very strong, have a new queens, about three frames with brood and wet honey around the brood nest. Seems there is something around stimulating the hives into continued brood rearing.

On my last visit to my bush hives, Crimson Rata was in full flower, totally out of season. I have also seen the odd flower on Manuka bushes, Pohutukawa, Wattles, Eucalyptus, as well as spring bulbs flowering. At the same time Tree Lucerne, our trusty spring source of early nectar and pollen is budding up. However now the cold weather is here, the bees flying activity should be curtailed and the bees will go into their winter cluster.

There is still a little maintenance you can do around the hives, weather permitting. Open up the vegetation so the hives get a much sun as possible. Keep the grass down and check for condensation under hive mats or lids. Just as a side issue, have you noticed just how quickly a dark painted hive heats up in the sun. When it comes to repainting hives, consider using pastel colours. Bees find it easier to orientate to their hives it the supers are all different colours. I scout around the paint shops to see if they have any miss-tints. Generally, this is a cheap way of acquiring good quality paint.

I still have a few small nucs around the house and will now put them into four frame full size boxes so they will have enough food for the winter. They are very small in bee numbers so I hope they will survive OK. Some of the others have been used to requeen hives found to be queenless. Queenless hives really roar at this time of the year if they are disturbed. If you find one and haven’t got a replacement queen, unite it with another using a sheet of newspaper and make a split in the spring to replace it.

If some of your hives feel a little light (ie the brood rearing has consumed a lot of their winter stores), put 2kg of raw sugar into the top feeder. Add a shake of water to the edge to encourage the bees to feed on the sugar and leave. The bees will soon get the idea that they have a convenient food supply close at hand and this will provide an emergency supply should they run out of stored honey. If they have plenty of stores, then they will leave it and the sugar will help provide a little insulation. As soon as the weather warms up in the spring, the bees will consume the sugar so it won’t be wasted.

If you store your honey super in a shed or garage, check the frames for wax moth and add a tablespoon of PDB to each stack if you see wax moth larvae. Normally the cold weather will kill of the moths in gear stored outside so no further treatments are necessary for these.

Over the next few months, we will be telling new beekeepers how to set up a hive. Bring any questions to the meeting.

The blame for this must be laid on dear old Nicky Atkinson, who contributed something similar, decades ago.

Anyway, the materials came to hand after a thoughtful grovel in the basement: - an empty golden syrup tin, some scraps of leather (ex Otaihanga tip), a couple of hand-me-down shower fittings, (you never know when it'll come in handy), scraps of ancient 9 mm plywood (couldn't bear to burn them.), etc.

Hack, snip, file, saw, bash and generally scratch head in Pooh Bear fashion until … time to test with dry Kauri wood-turning shavings… it goes … and keeps going. The bellows spring is high tensile No. 10 fencing wire - without which a true kiwi project wouldn't be complete.

Then I saw a real smoker, factory-built.

There has been some discussion this winter about the use of bee repellents to remove honey from colonies. It appears that this has been initiated as a result of concerns over recent changes to European honey regulations. There is some concern that we will find some non-tariff barriers being developed to prevent North American honey entering the European market. Apart from concerns over honey from genetically modified crops, there are concerns about residues of butyric acid in honey. The current bee repellents that are used contain butyric anhydride. It has always been thought that this was a safe product to use since one of the breakdown products is butyric acid and this is naturally found in honey. However, there is some concern that the Europeans may establish upper levels of butyric acid and that these levels may be indiscriminately chosen and not necessarily reflect the level of butyric acid that may be found naturally in different types of honey.

Secondly, there is some concern that if misused, products such as BeeGo and Honey Robber, which contain butyric anhydride, may cause artificially high levels of butyric acid.

So far, there have not been any problems. However, as with all such issues, it is best to be careful and prudent and try to anticipate any potential problems rather than having to deal with them after the fact. To this end, I would like to suggest some measures that could be followed to minimize the use of butyric anhydride and minimize the risk of increasing butyric acid levels in honey.

1. Avoid using such products. Many beekeepers have started using the set-aside method for taking off honey, particularly for the first round and perhaps even for the second, if weather conditions permit. This simply involves removing the honey boxes and setting them to the side and allowing the bees to find their way back to the parent hive. The boxes can be set on top of the hive or they can be set to the side of the hive.

Care must be taken to ensure that no brood is in the honey boxes otherwise the bees will not leave. Many producers use queen excluders with this method but this method can be used even without queen excluders if care is taken to ensure there is no brood in the boxes that are removed. Within three to four hours the bees will vacate the honey boxes and return the parent hive. This method allows for honey removal without the use of bee repellents. It works well for commercial operators who might not be inclined to use devices such bee escape boards.

For the smaller operator a bee escape board is another alternate solution. This involves the use of a one-way bee escape or usually, four or five of them placed in a division board to allow the bees to leave the honey boxes and return to the brood area. Once they have left they cannot return. Such devices take about two days to operate but they can be quite handy for a person having only one or two hives.

The one draw back with such devices is that the equipment needs to be absolutely bee tight particularly at the end of the year. At such times, once the honey flow is diminishing or has stopped, as fast as the bees are migrating out of the supers back to the brood, new bees are entering into the supers to try to rob the honey and take it elsewhere.

2. Butyric acid levels will increase if the honey that is removed is uncapped. Uncapped, as opposed to honey that is completely capped, will expose the honey to the fumes of the butyric anhydride and more of the butyric anhydride will be absorbed into the honey. While this may be an opportunity to minimize the butyric anhydride levels, it is not necessarily practical, particularly on a commercial scale, since under our conditions we can remove honey from the hive before it is totally capped and still have it below 17.8% moisture. However, this issue is mentioned here because it will have an impact on butyric acid levels.

Acid boards should have high rims. If the acid board is not built very deep and the cloth is not taunt then there is the risk of the butyric anhydride coming in contact with burr comb on the top of the honey box and this may hasten the absorption of butyric acid into the extracted honey.

Amount used. Clearly the more butyric anhydride that is used the more risk of butyric acid residues being higher in the honey. Butyric acid works well to chase bees out of boxes when the temperatures are warm. When temperatures have cooled, the bees tend not to want to leave as quickly and so the temptation is to put more butyric acid onto the acid boards. Perhaps a better solution would be to blow the bees out of the supers.

Some beekeepers have reported using the set-aside method later in the season even after the honey flow is finished by removing the last honey boxes late in the day, just before dark, and coming back to the yard early in the morning to remove the honey boxes before the bees begin to fly. I have never tried this personally so I am not able to corroborate this information but have no reason to suspect that it is not true.

I suspect the largest problem with residues stems from too many acid boards being used. I personally am not able to keep up with more than four acid boards in my small operation. I suspect that a ratio of four acid boards or five acid boards per person on the crew is probably more than sufficient to operate at maximum efficiency. However, I have heard of people using eight to ten acid boards per person in the crew. This makes me believe that there will be acid boards sitting on some boxes for well in excess of ten minutes. If this is happening on days when the bees have moved out of the boxes within a minute or two then there is a great deal of unnecessary, increased exposure which may be causing the higher butyric acid residue levels. Perhaps the best opportunity to lower the levels is to lower the number of acid boards used in a yard so that the empty honey super is taken away immediately after the bees have cleared the super.

On those days that acid boards work well or even on those where the weather may be marginal, I have found that a puff or three of smoke applied to the top before the acid board is placed on top helps to get the bees going in the right direction. On real hot days it will help to drive the bees down before the acid board is placed onto the stack so that they do not become disoriented. On marginal days a few puffs of smoke will get them going in the right direction and this may help the acid boards to work a little better.

All beekeepers are advised to review their system of removing honey, particularly if they are using product containing butyric anhydride. While these products continue to be registered for use, it behooves all of us to minimize their use as best we can to minimize butyric acid residue levels.

Don't forget that the annual mead competition will take place in July. Refer to the minutes of the May meeting (page 2) for competition rules. You should be preparing your mead samples now. If you need a recipe, refer to the February newsletter (or www.beehive.org.nz/tips-and-advice/taa-mead-recipe.htm)

The annual NBA conference will be held in Ashburton, from July 12^th – 15^th. Contact Paul Bartrum on 03-614 7790 for additional information or registration details.

These returns are now overdue. If you have not yet completed yours and sent it to AgriQuality, then do it NOW. The return for each year must be completed and sent back to AgriQuality as agents for the National Beekeepers Association, on or before 1^st June 1999. You are legally obliged to make this return under the PMS regulations. Murray Reid (AgriQuality) reported at the end of May that the number of returns received at that point had been "disappointing". Don’t wait to be chased up – get your return in now!

Now is the time to think about re-queening your hives in the springtime. Order queens from a queen breeder, but be prepared to manage your hive through the early part of the buildup as fickle weather in spring may delay or prevent queens from mating. A list of Queen breeders is available on the club's website.

The committee is looking for interesting and relevant speakers for meetings this year. It is hoped that Andrew Matheson will be available to talk to one meeting. If you have any suggestions please contact John Burnet on 232 7863 (or secretary@beehive.org.nz).