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

PRESENT: Frank Lindsay (Pres.), Mary Ann Lindsay (Treas), John Burnet (Sec.) and 45 members as listed in the attendance book.

NEW MEMBERS & VISITORS: Michelle Caldwell (Wainuiomata)

MINUTES OF PREVIOUS MEETING: Minutes of meeting held 10 Dec as detailed in the Feb newsletter were read and confirmed.

MATTERS ARISING: Western Australian Honey – Submissions concerning the proposal to allow imports of WA honey closed on 7 January.

Honey Prices – President advised that the wholesale price had increased by $1 per kilo from last year.

GPS – Some members’ apiary registrations still lack grid references. The Club will assist in determining these at first opportunity.

Plastic frames – Contrary to interpretation by some in Dec minutes, it was confirmed plastic frames do not require additional 50mmm spacing.

Varroa Update – President outlined details of the recent log incident at the Pauatahanui sawmill and advised Ivan Pedersen was responsible for alerting authorities to the presence of the infected colony in the hive. Following confirmation of varroa in the feral colony, MAF instituted a letter drop to all residents within 5km seeking details of feral colonies with a reasonable response - one colony was reported within 500m of the local Catholic church.

Apistan strips and sticky boards were placed in all hives within 5km of the sawmill and a restricted zone was established (Whitby to Britton’s house moving yard) preventing any hives or beekeeping equipment from being moved out of the area. A bait hive was set up at the sawmill and this will be watched for bee-lining and to locate nearby colonies.

President reminded members that if they see mites on bees they’re too late to save their hive ! There were simple cheap options available if close monitoring of hives was possible i.e. castor or icing sugar, vinegar or ascetic acid.

President confirmed forthcoming visit by UK beekeeper Trevor Tong and will organise a meeting about 1 or 2 Mar to discuss impact of varroa on UK beekeeping if sufficient interest by club members and Trevor’s touring schedule in NZ will allow.

TREASURER’S REPORT: No bank details to report due to lack of accounts since last meeting. Further to Dec minutes, hall hire account now received and final amount ($440) approved for payment by members.

GENERAL BUSINESS: Member’s Queries – The issue of control of sacbrood was raised and president confirmed that changing the frames and the queen was the best solution.

Other issues discussed - uniting colonies using the newspaper method, choice and use of escape boards, necessity and advantages of recycling frames every 5 years, bee stings and reactions, sting control methods.

Seasonal Flowering – the main honey flow is over however a weak flow is continuing in some areas particularly where eucalyptus is flowering. Autumn requeening should now be considered – nearest queen supplier is probably Keanes in Foxton, which has recently been taken over by Gary Mills from Levin.

Demonstration – Andrew Beach gave a quick demonstration on the construction of a solar wax melter using a polystyrene fish box, a sheet of horticultural glass and a printer’s aluminium plate.

Manuka Honey Sites – Vaughan Kearns advised that Central North Island beekeepers are now paying local farmers for manuka sites – however owing to the poor season, these beekeepers have missed out badly this year. Vaughn also recounted personal experience with movement of varroa infected hives around MAF’s varroa control line.

Meeting closed at 9:30 pm and was followed by the usual supper.

Beekeepers embark on consultation and ballot process for levies. A two-tier levy system to replace the current Commodity Levies (Bee Products) Order 1996 that beekeepers with more than 10 hives must pay, has been recommended by the National Beekeepers Association (NBA) compliance and review committee.

"The commodity levy established to fund the National Pest Management Strategy (PMS) to control American foulbrood disease is due to expire on 1 December 2002," said NBA President, Don Bell. "This current system frustrates hobby beekeepers and is time-consuming and costly for the NBA to administer.

"A revised levy scheme proposal was adopted at the NBA annual general meeting in 2001 and would include a base levy and a hive levy under Section 90 of the Biosecurity Act and a commodity levy based on production.

"The NBA must now develop the two levy proposals further and seek stakeholder and statutory approval. Extensive consultation will start next month with NBA area meetings and mailouts to all beekeepers. "The NBA hopes to have the support it needs from the industry to make an application to the Minister of Biosecurity for a Section 90 levy by the end of April.

"Beekeepers wishing to make submissions on the proposal may write directly to the Minister with their concerns. If the Minister is satisfied that a Section 90 levy is the best way to fund the PMS and that concerns of objectors have been met a levy can be recommended.

"Once consultation with stakeholders is completed, a referendum on commodity levy proposal will be held for those required to pay the levy. If the referendum result is in favour of a commodity levy, an application will be sent to the Minister to have a new levy in place by December 2002."

NBA, 21 February 2002

In March of 2000, the club minutes record that a Jean Watkin of Miramar shared an old recipe for making vinegar from honey. I have had a request for this recipe from Kaye Murley, of Victoria, Australia. If anyone knows where to obtain it, please contact me on 565 0164 or via e-mail on editor@beehive.org.nz.

James Scott

Last month, I mentioned an alternative way of removing honey using a bee escape. Vicky reported that it wasn't working which made me rethink. Basically the system only works if there is a flow on. Some commercial beekeepers do exactly the same thing in the middle of summer. Instead of blowing all the bees out of supers, they just stack them on the truck, drive a hundred meters away and wait half and hour and all the supers are clear of bees. But this doesn't work unless the bees are busy. If there isn't a flow on, the bees will not leave exposed supers and will defend their honey. So before trying the easy way of removing honey (honey super on a board with an escape on top), make sure the bees are working a flow. If they are defensive, its not going to work and you will just have to use the normal method of using bee escapes.

The season is quickly coming to a close. Already we are having heavy dews most mornings; a sure sign that winter is only just around the corner.

Autumn flowering sources are now evident. A dribble of a flow is coming in from Koromiko, Lance wood, Pink and Scarlet Eucalyptus and a few late flowering ground sources in wet areas such as Penny Royal and Lotus Major. This stimulates the bees into producing the last generation that will take the hive through the winter.

Most will have taken their honey crop off by now and we should be setting up our hives for winter and the coming spring.

I have looked into a couple of our members' hives recently and it's been interesting. There were lots on bees on the landing boards and some minor fighting, an indication that the robbing season isn't far away. I like to just leave a minimum of 100 mm by 10 mm. Reduced entrances are easier to defend and should be small enough to prevent a mouse entering the hive.

When the hives were opened it was easy to see that it's been a difficult year. Hives are not exceptionally strong but most had sufficient winter stores, however they were noticeably short of pollen. I estimate that these hives only had a couple of day's supply of pollen. Two hives had supersedure cells and although the queens were in the hives, they had stopped laying.

One hive was particularly weak. It was headed by an October swarm queen that had "half moon" disorder. This is caused through poor nutrition when the queen was developing and when first emerged, so the queen's ovaries did not develop fully. Symptoms look similar to EFB in that the hive has a patchy brood pattern with quite a number of dead larvae curled towards the front of the cells in a crescent, hence the name half moon. The only difference between this an EFB is that the larvae weren't yellow and you can usually spot multiple eggs in the cells. If you uncap some of the sealed brood you can often see drone larvae in the worker cells.

Any time you are going through a hive and spot something unusual that you are not sure about, take a sample of three larvae, seal them in a plastic bag and contact your local AgriQuality Advisory Officer. He will arrange for the sample to be tested and will notify you of the results. In this case, the queen was pinched out and the supersedure cells left to develop. Hopefully we'll have a nice stable autumn for the queens to mate and the bees to gather sufficient pollen to over winter. If not the hives might have to be assisted with a pollen supplement in the early spring.

Another beekeeper has had a particularly bad time with his hive after it swarmed and has now developed laying workers. No matter how many queens are introduced into the hive, they are killed. I made the mistake of not shaking all the bees out of the hive (some distance away from the hive) before introducing a nuc on top using the newspaper method. Unfortunately that queen went the same way as the others. Now it's best to remove most of the honey and start again with another nuc or swarm. Once the new hive is established, the bees from the old hive can be shaken on to the ground 30 meters away and the field bees will return and unite with the nuc.

The requirements for wintering down are a young queen, adequate stores of pollen and honey, light coloured brood frames and sound woodware.

Start with the baseboard. Check that the foundation is secure and it's off the ground by about 100 mm. It should have a slight slope forward to allow the rain to run off.

Reassemble the hive and removed old, dark heavy brood frames, frames with broken lugs, or those with patches of drone cells and replace them with fully drawn, capped honey frames produced this year. If the old frames can not be removed because they contain brood or pollen, move these to the outside of the super for later removal.

Scientific research has indicated that bees prefer newly drawn wax to old brood comb, which is logical in a way. It harbours less disease spores such as Chalkbrood, Nosema and perhaps even the odd spore of AFB. All hives contain reservoirs of spores in the brood comb hence it makes sense to remove these out of the system on a regular basis. A three-year turn over of all frames in the brood nest is recommended in most books. This system is practiced by quite a few large beekeeping operations and their disease levels are negligible - one or two hives per thousand hives.

The most important aspect to check is the viability of the queen. She should be young and vigorous. No need to find her, you can tell by looking at the brood pattern whether she is any good or not. Select an area of uncapped brood and look at the larvae. Are they all the same age, with very few missed cells. If not, consider replacing her now or at least consider over-wintering a nucleus as a spring replacement because queens are quite hard to obtain in the early spring. As a rule, more that 15 missed cells in 100 (75mm X 75mm) means a 15% reduction in honey crop.

A lot of my queens superseded this autumn. How can you tell? The only method is to mark the queen. I use water based poster paint pens but others use water based correcting fluid. Some fluids give off a toxic vapour and queens have to be held and blown on so they do not suffocate. Learn to catch and release drones by applying the minimum amount of pressure. Queens are delicate so you have to be careful. One method is to catch her by the wings, her legs are held between the thumb and forefinger of the other hand. A spot is applied to her thorax, allow it to dry for a minute, and then placing her back on the frame she came from. Queen catchers are available commercially, which gently pins her to the comb surface allowing her to be marked. Too much paint on the head or body could see her being replaced by the bees.

A lot of commercial beekeepers don't bother marking queens, they have a policy of replacing all queens each autumn plus carry a few nucs through the winter to make up for weak or queenless colonies in the spring. You don't need extra equipment to do this. Last year I carried a number of nucs through the winter in cardboard boxes. By spring they had eaten through the bottom but were a cheap alternative when gear is short.

Things to do this month: BL check before removing any honey. Extract honey, requeen, winter down hives and remove old combs

Don't forget to get your honey competition samples ready for next month!

Aim: The aim of this competition is to get members to prepare and present a sample of their honey. A cup is awarded to the winner of the liquid honey class, along with a miniature that may be kept.

There are three classes in the competition:

1. Liquid Honey. This is the standard honey produced from extraction. The emphasis is on quality of presentation; it is not about the taste of the honey. Ensure that there are no air bubbles, or other particles, no granulation, and suitably low water content.
2. Creamed Honey. The emphasis is once again on presentation, with the aim being to have a smooth and consistent texture to the honey.
3. Comb Honey. Entries to be a frame of honey that would be suitable for cutting and packing as comb honey. Emphasis is on the presentation of the frame. Please bring a complete frame.

Conditions of entry: Entries in classes 1 and 2 are to be presented in a clear glass 350ml jar (a standard 200g coffee jar is recommended) with a well fitting lid. Entries in class 3 are to consist of a complete frame (full or 3/4 depth). No labels or markings on the jar or lid for entries in classes 1 and 2. The frame should also be clear of any identifying marks. There is a limit of one entry per member for each class.

Tips and advice:

• The secret in this competition is to take great care in filtering your honey to remove impurities, and to get rid of air bubbles.
• Start only with the best honey that has low moisture content (so that it will keep).
• Judges comments form previous years have indicated a high standard of entries, but there have been some recurring problems with impurities (eg bees legs), air bubbles and high levels of moisture. Pay particular attention to these things to come up with a winning standard of entry.
• Prepare more than one entry and select the best for the competition.

DO YOU KNOW? TRUE OR FALSE

The presence of empty comb in the hive enhances the level of behavior in a colony?

ANSWER - TRUE The presence of empty comb within a hive enhances the level of defensive behaviour. Unidentified pheromones in the empty combs apparently lower the threshold of response to intruders. Colonies housed in hives with large areas of empty comb respond to disturbance twice as fast and sting twice as much as colonies with little empty comb. (From the Nov Bee Culture).

Frank Lindsay

[Frank's were so bad that he had to buy a new "super protective" bee suit this year to avoid the stinging. See Frank for details of his suit.]

There will be a seminar in April this year for hobby beekeepers to learn about varroa. This seminar is one of a series being delivered by MAF as part of the Government funded programme to manage the spread of varroa. All club members are encouraged to attend. Look out for details in next month's newsletter.

Adopted Sizes for the Metric Langstroth Hive (all dimensions are in millimetres). If you are intending to make up some new hive woodware this winter, please note the official standard for New Zealand Beehives.

Hive Body Timber Thickness:    20 mm (derived from 25 mm green-sawn)

Hive Body Outer Measurements: 505 mm x 405 mm

Hive Body Inner Measurements: 465 mm x 365 mm

Hive Body Depth
Brood Super: (full depth) 238 mm (from 250 mm green-sawn)
Honey Super (three-quarter): 185 mm (from 200 mm green-sawn)
Section Super (half depth): 133 mm (from 150 mm green-sawn)

Rebate: Depth x Ledge: 13 mm x 10 mm

Hoffman Frame Sizes (brood chamber)
Top Bar: Length x width x thickness: 482 mm x 25 mm x 16 mm
Bottom Bar: length x width x thickness: 450 mm x 25 mm x 10 mm
End Bar: length x width x thickness: 230 mm x 33 mm x 10 mm

Manley Frame Sizes (honey supers)
Top Bar: Length x width x thickness: 482 mm x 25 mm x 16 mm
Bottom Bar: length x width x thickness: 450 mm x 25 mm x 10 mm
End Bar: length x width x thickness: 177 mm x 43 mm x 10 mm

It appears as though the varroa infestation found at Pauatahanui has been contained. Nothing has shown up in any of the monitored hives. Frank reports that all feral colonies in the area have now been destroyed, thereby preventing these hosting the pest over the winter and causing a spread in the spring.

The club will hold a diseasathon on 23^rd March. This will cover parts of the Hutt Valley where disease has been prevalent in the past. Meet in the Melling Station car park at 8:30 am. If the weather is unsuitable, it will be postponed until 6^th April. Phone Frank on 478 3367 or James 565 0164 if you are able to participate.

The club's annual mead competition will be in June, so members should be planning now on making mead. There is a recipe in this edition of the newsletter, and James has a copy of a paper on mead making. Anyone who would like a copy, please see James at the meeting.

Don't forget that the club has one (or two?) extractors available for members to hire. These cost $10 per time (ie over a weekend or similar), and need to be returned promptly in clean working order. Contact May-Ann Lindsay (ph 478 3367) for more information if you are interested.

The committee is always looking for interesting and/or relevant speakers for future meetings. If you have any suggestions please contact our secretary,
John Burnet on 232 7863 (or secretary@beehive.org.nz).

• April (8th): Honey Competition
• May (13th): (to be advised)
• June (10^th): Mead Competition