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 17 members as listed in the attendance book.

APOLOGIES: John Robson, Ken Breden, Andrew Yung, Amor Walter, Pam McDowell

MINUTES OF PREVIOUS MEETING: Minutes of 13 May meeting were read and confirmed.

MATTERS ARISING:

Varroa Workshop: Members were reminded of the Varroa workshop to be held on 14 June.

Varroa Mesh: Treasurer advised one roll of mesh has been ordered for club members and delivery was expected in approx 10 weeks. Mesh was manufactured in Japan hence the delay and cost.

Varroa Update: Varroa has now been found 5 – 6 kilometres north of Wanganui – an isolated outbreak probably caused by hitchhiking bees from a slow-moving southbound truck. The newly infected hives are being moved north of the boundary line and all feral colonies in the vacinity destroyed. Movement of the boundary line south has been rejected as there is no logical geographical boundary that could be easily defended.

MAF are about to conduct a survey of 500 randomly chosen hives adjacent to main state highways south of the boundary line to verify that varroa has not spread beyond the currently known infected area. Some Club members may have already been requested by MAF to participate in this survey.

President advised that MAF are also planning to establish contracts with interested beekeepers (or other interested parties such as pest control operators) to provide immediate response teams for control of unwanted insects at ports and airports. It may be worthwhile for club members to organise themselves and tender for the Wgton port and airport contract. A rapid response, probably within an hour, would be an essential requirement of the contract.

SEASONAL MANAGEMENT:

Owing to the mild winter to date, most members report an abnormal amount of brood in hives for this time of year. If this brood persists, this will mean early supercedure, early swarming and early use of winter foodstocks i.e. hives should be checked for adequate food supplies in August, one or two months earlier than usual.

MEMBERS’ QUERIES:

A question arose concerning forcing bees in the upper section of a newly united hive to merge with the bottom population. It was suggested that the queen and the brood should be physically relocated to the bottom colony and the rest of the upper colony would follow.

An easy method to rebuild a hive following uniting was suggested. The hive should be laid on its side; boxes are then easily separated and restacked to suit. The initial lowering of the hive to the ground could however would require considerable strength and care to avoid unnecessary disruption to bees.

BEEKEEPING IN DENMARK: Ivan Pedersen spoke about a recent survey of new and ex - beekeepers in Denmark. Considerable resources from the Danish government were going into identifying and handling unregistered hives and there was increased attention and effort being paid to beekeeper education and encouragement.

PRESENTATION – ANATOMY OF A BEE: With the assistance of an OHP, the President co-ordinated a question and answer session on the anatomy of a bee which members found quite enlightening.

Meeting closed at 9:00 pm with the usual supper and refreshments.

The AGM will be held this month. The usual business will be conducted, including

• President's Report
• Presentation of Accounts
• Approval of AFB compensation claims
• Election of new committee
• Any other Business

Come along to the meeting - don't be put off by the possibility that you might find yourself on the committee. For one thing, being on the committee is not an onerous task (there is not much responsibility) though there is lots of opportunity for doing things that are near and dear to you! In addition, anybody can decline a nomination to stand for a position, if you really do not wan to be involved.

Members of the 2001/02 Executive Committee are:

• President: Frank Lindsay
• Past President: Richard Hatfield
• Vice-President: Andrew Beach
• Secretary: John Burnet
• Treasurer: Mary-Ann Lindsay
• Committee Members: James Scott,
  Vaughan Kearns
  Wrae Duncan,
  Vicky Alexander
• Newsletter Editor: James Scott
• Librarian: Fritz Fuchs & Max Aston

All of these positions are subject to nomination and election. If you would like to offer yourself for the committee, then please contact John Burnet or Frank Lindsay. If you think that another member would make a great contribution to the committee, then please arrange to nominate them (with their agreement of course :-).

Beekeeping here in Wellington has ceased in the last few weeks. Attention now turns to maintenance of equipment and building replacements. Alternative treatment for mites requires sound gear with no additional entrances. I have quite a few supers that are past their use by date that need attention before mites get here. Sort through your spare honey frames and put aside for melting in the summer any frames that have patches of drone brood.

When varroa arrives the idea is to concentrate all your drone brood on to one frame. If you have more than 5% of drone comb on other frames, your integrated pest management methods will not work. i.e. 60 cells of drone brood will produce the same amount of mites as 1000 worker cells through out the year. Hence it's important to reduce the amount of drone comb in your hives. At the same time reject any with broken lugs or are heavy and dark. These dark frames tend to darken your honey and are a reservoir for disease spores (nosema, chalkbrood, sac brood and AFB). Bees in clean frames are healthier and therefore produce more honey.

Time for a holiday? It's now too cold here for most outdoor activities unless they are associated with winter sports. However in the Pacific Islands although it's winter, the temperature is still in the low twenties. We visited New Caledonia for a week and really enjoyed it although everything is very expensive. Our currency is roughly $2 to the 100 pacific francs (PCF). Most things are imported and these attract a 30% import tax. Meat (beef) costs $30-40 per kg but salaries are high, between $50 and 100,000 PCF.

Honey, bees and used hive produces are prohibited imports to protect the bees and beekeeping industry on the main and outlying Islands. New Zealand has been involved in training some of their young beekeepers at Telford. You can't blame them for wanting to protect their small bee industry. We heard at a trade stand that there are no bees or honey produced on Vanuatu since Varroa arrived.

June is the rainy season and crops are being planted out ready for harvesting in October. Most days have the odd patch of cloud moving through which give the odd heavy dump of rain for an hour or two then the weather quickly clears. There is a slight breeze most days which basically only comes from two directions NW & SE (the trade winds so important in the days of sail). A good place for anybody interested in water sports, diving, sail boarding, kite sailing but also nice to just sit on the beach. The people are friendly and its very safe. Greet them in French and tell them you are from NZ and most will talk to you in English. We visited most of the Noumea tourist spots: the reef, gardens, museums, churches, shops, the library and walked around the town.

I only saw one apiary as we passed in a bus; of about 10 hives in a line, two supers high on steel stands about 500 mm off the ground. We did not meet any beekeepers (Apicutleurs) but bees could be seen visiting flowers around Noumea. Quite a lot of shrubs were flowering but the main ones were Mango and coconut. Honeybees could be seen working the coconut palms (see photo previous page) along the beachfront all day for both nectar and pollen. These bees were the same as can be see around Wellington varying from dark mellifera -mellifera to light banded Italian bees.

There was also a small native bee working flowers, which are very nervous and quick in flight. Took half an hour to get a picture. Each time I focused the camera on one of these, it is off again. We also noticed a paper wasp gathering nectar.

At the hotel, the honey on the breakfast menu was acacia, a rather dark but not an unpleasant honey. In the shops and supermarkets, local honey was displayed in an assortment of containers, squeeze top plastic, wine bottles and glass honey jars. All the honey (Le miel) displayed was liquid and rather dark. Prices were rather amazing and varied slightly between shops and supermarkets. 250g - 395F = $NZ 6.96. 500g Glass - 575 to 630 F = $10.26 to $11.25, gift pack of three 50g honeys - 7795F = $14.19, 1 litre glass bottles 895 to 995F = $15.89 to $17.76.

Years ago when I first started beekeeping, I had terrible problems with bees dying off in the spring (disappearing disease) and low production. I finally identified Nosema as the cause and treated with fumagillin, the recommended way.

After the 1988 Australian Seminar, I brought a microscope and started playing around and reading up research papers and old journals on the subject. About 1977 Australia conducted a number of tests to determine which was the most effective treatment methods, treatment times, etc.

They found that to sprinkle medicated sugar syrup over all the bees in the hive (about half a litre), three weeks apart had the best results and was extremely cost effective.

I played with this for a number of years but when I started producing a surplus of honey and found that hives had to be free of drugs, I looked for alternative methods of dealing with the problem.

It took a number of years but by selective breeding and monitoring of hives (many, many samples of mashed up bees each month) I final breed the problem out of most of my bees. It also dramatically reduced the presence of paralysis and brought up product levels again.

Today, out of my 480 hives I have only noticed a problem with 6 hives this year and this was an extremely wet one when most hives were under stress through a lack of pollen.

These six got one sprinkle of medicated syrup and were requeened. Hives are marked so any honey is used as stores and as many as possible of the brood frames are changed if the hive fails to progress.

You to can reduce this problem by simply changing brood frames more often and breeding the problem away. The extra half, to one full super of honey also helps.

When you start looking at hives in the spring and find a spotty brood pattern, you normally assume it's the queen. If you look further (sample bees) you'll find it's nosema. I have killed many hundreds of queens over the years thinking it was their fault, when it turned out to be Nosema and found a good dollop of pollen supplement fixed the problem.

Now, should we debate pollen supplements since spring is just around the corner? What's best formulations now that Lactalbumin is no longer available? Has the "Whey" product (Bee Alive?) produced by the dairy industry been tested to identify the amount of protein for the different amino acids our bees require? Or should we be buying Brian's product. It's just that I don't see it being cost effective to pay for freighting water. ---

Are you aware that 5 parts per million of Oxytetracyline (OTC) could be our honey standard soon? (I thinks this figure is correct but can't find my copy of the Aust Beekeep article). Australian Beekeeping Associations are putting this forward to our (Australian and New Zealand) Food Standards Authority as a recommendation to cover their EFB problem. This could be a 4 to 2 vote so could possibly become our standard. The Canadian standard is "zero" OTC contamination.

One step further - How are we going to react when EFB is discovered here in NZ. Use drugs or look at what the UK is researching. IE Changing all the brood frames with foundation in "all" hives in an apiary to give a brood break and remove contaminated material. Costly if you have 50 hives in an apiary. Still EFB (after the initial acute phase) will only affect those beekeepers who equalize their hives by exchanging frames of brood. Most of those who prepare hives for paid pollination I suspect.

Are you aware that the Australian minimum temperatures of hot water for sanitizing processing equipment, benches, utensils and all contact points, varies from State to State, from 70 to 77 deg C. Our local authority only requires 63 deg C at the hot water tap. (May 2002 Australasian Beekeeper).

We seem to be falling behind Australia in basic research and food handling standards. How can we maintain our edge if we neglect the basics?

Membership of the Wellington Beekeepers Association runs from June to May of the following year. Subscriptions are due at the AGM, held on the second Monday of July each year.

Membership of the Beekeepers Association provides regular opportunities for learning about all aspects of bees through meeting and discussion with other enthusiastic beekeepers. It doesn't matter whether you are a beginner or have years of experience - there are plenty of opportunities to learn from and to help others with similar interests.

The club produces a monthly newsletter with articles of interest and notices of relevance to members. There is also a comprehensive web site (www.beehive.org.nz) containing a significant wealth of material, including articles and information from old newsletters.

The Association has a very active disease detection and prevention programme in the greater Wellington region. Education of club members to recognise disease and to develop management practices that will prevent hives succumbing to diseases likely to be present is a key object. In addition, the club provides support for beekeepers who have hives destroyed following detection of AFB disease.

Complete the application form below and send to the Club Treasurer with your cheque.

Complete the following from and send with your subscription payment to the Treasurer, Mary-Ann Lindsay, 26 Cunliffe Street, Johnsonville (ph 478 3367)

$20* subscription for the 2002/03 year, due June 2002.

Received From:

Name:

Address:

E-mail:

Phone: Enclosed: $20* Cheque / Cash

Date: Receipt No: _________________

(* If you would like to receive newsletters via e-mail, you will be entitled to a discount of $5 on the membership fee. Please supply a valid e-mail address).

The AGM of the club will be held this month. Refer to page 3 for further information. The current committee all look forward to seeing large numbers of you attending this important event.

Last month's newsletter incorrectly advised that membership of the Association ran from July to June of the following year. This is not correct, as it is actually from June until May of the next year to align with the Association's financial year.

The Club maintains a fund for disease management and control. One of the purposes of this fund is to provide some compensation to members who have had hives destroyed during the year as a result of AFB infection. Any member wishing to make a claim on the fund for such compensation must submit their claim in writing to the Secretary prior to the AGM on July 8^th. Write to John Burnet, Secretary, 21 Kiwi Cres., Tawa, Wellington.

We will have a special session at our August meeting (ie next month), for each of you to bring along and show off interesting gizzmos and gadgets that you have invented or constructed to make your beekeeping easier. Bring along your most useful home-made item (or even an unusual commercial product) so that the rest of us can learn and perhaps adopt the idea ourselves. Winter time is traditionally the period when beekeepers reflect on the past season, and make up new equipment to assist them with a better or easier time over the coming season.

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).

• August (12th): (Gizzmos and gadgets)
• September (9^th): (to be advised)
• October (14th): (to be advised)