PRESENT: Frank Lindsay (Pres.), Mary Anne Lindsay (Treas.), John Burnet (Sec.), and 33 members as listed in the attendance book.

APOLOGIES: John Wallace, Bob Porter, Silas Stedman, Amor Walter, Karl Segessenmann.

NEW MEMBERS & VISITORS: Maurice Dellow (Manawatu B/K Club), Simon Annear & Janet Geritzlehner (Horokiwi), Tomasz Swinarski & Katarzyna Lower-Swinarski (Naenae).

MINUTES OF PREVIOUS MEETING: Minutes of meeting held 13 October as printed and circulated in the Nov newsletter were confirmed.

• Apistan strips should now be removed as honey flow was about to start in many Wellington suburbs. Varroa was now confirmed as present in Porirua and Normandale, Western Hutt.

• Swarms: Food stocks varied considerably between hives despite being in neighbouring areas. This resulted in swarm reports in some areas but not others. Andrew advised he had collected five in Waikanae on the previous Saturday. Swarm amalgamation and hive uniting techniques were discussed. Members were reminded to keep the first queen cell discovered in each hive in case you find the queen is missing. President advised he had recently learned that you can’t put varroa strips into newly hived swarms otherwise they will abscond.

• Requeening: When introducing new queens to hives, members were advised to wrap half the queen cage with tape to prevent her footpads being chewed off. If this happened supercedure was likely within a month as she was unable to spread her pheromones.
• Oxalic Acid: Burning techniques were discussed. Andrew Beach advised he still had supplies of oxalic crystals available for $5.
• Seasonal Management: Trees and shrubs currently flowering – rewarewa, pohutukawa, cabbage tree, tarata and buttercup.

Members should be checking hives now and putting on empty supers – don’t wait for white waxing on the top bars of the top super.

MEMBERS’ QUERIES: New plastic frames should be first rubbed with wax to entice bees onto them. Ten undrawn frames per box – reduce to nine then eight as combs are drawn. Space by eye although spacers are available and often used overseas particularly when transporting hives.

Club member Richard Wickens talked about his recent experience working for a commercial beekeeper in Canada. Main points –

- Responded to advertisement for a beekepper with "an adventurous spirit" in Bee Culture.

- Based at Meadow Lark Honey, Gladstone, Manitoba - population 900 – (140km from Winnipeg)

- Heart of the Honey Belt – main nectar sources – canola, sunflowers, dwarf beans, buck wheat.

- 38 – 40 hives per bee-yard (apiary) – 40 yards in total with beekeepers taking two weeks to visit every yard during the harvest.

- Generally three collections taken from each hive during the season. The harvesting season was limited to eight weeks.

- Bees cleared from hives using "BeeGo" on fume boards.

- Crops usually 250-300 lbs per hive – 7 full depth boxes per hive. Harvest totalled 400 drums of honey.

- Bulk honey price currently US$2 per pound

- Apistan was used to control varroa however bees were now becoming resistant and beekeepers were having to turn to harder drugs. Antibiotics were fed to hives annually.

- Severe contrast in seasons – the harvest generally ended with arrival of snow.

- Bees were replaced every two and a half years to enable gear to be scraped clean and replaced where necessary.

Did anyone else watch the Jim Hickey series ‘Flying in’ (or something similar) where Jim flew his small plane into different areas of mostly rural New Zealand, and gave us a brief taste of local life? One of the programmes visited ‘Molesworth Station’, once known as New Zealand’s "jewel in the crown". There we met a family (father and two sons) who have been beekeeping at Molesworth for 45 years. They do 23 trips a year to the station, working 50 million bees, and produce a mild honey with a unique flavour.

BAYVAROL STRIPS – these are available at Club night, $8.00 a pack.

ALSO: If you can lay hands on a copy of the November/December edition of the "NEW ZEALAND GEOGRAPHIC" Magazine, there is a 10 page article on "The Plight of the Humble Bee" about beekeeping after varroa, with some magnificent photos.

Question: How long do I fog a hive?

Answer: I apply a continuous steady flow of fog for about 5 seconds and a little longer for hives with honey supers. I may crack the top lid for hives with high stacks of supers.

Question: Why not use soaked kitchen towels?

Answer: Initially I tried using soaked kitchen towels, but gave up soon after because the towels were removed by the bees too fast, defeating the purpose of the experiments. The operation became labour intensive and the FGMO was depleted too soon, leaving the bees without protection.

Question: How often should fogging be done?

Answer: Tests have demonstrated that fogging once a week is sufficient to maintain mite-free colonies

Question: How should the fog be applied?

Answer: The fog can be easily applied through the entrance from the bottom (if using screened bottom boards or open bottoms), or from the top (considered labour intensive because it requires removing covers)

Question: Can I mix canola oil with FGMO

Answer: FGMO has been proven to be an efficient acaricide when used alone. Mixing other oils with FGMO may ruin your fogger. Also, mixing other oils with FGMO may cause your fogger to catch fire due to lowering of the flash point of the mixture. A word of caution regarding the fogger catching fire is appropriate here. The fogger should always be kept parallel to the entrance of the hive to prevent oil from flooding the heated coil and possibly igniting.

Question: Is it advisable to do fogging alone?

Answer: Tests have demonstrated that use of emulsion soaked cords and fogging are complementary. The use of the two together are more effective than the cords alone. Tests performed by the Spanish beekeepers … demonstrated that FGMO fogging alone is effective for the control of honey bee mites.

Some beekeepers have reported that fogging once a week is not feasible for them. I think that it is a matter of economics. If there are no colony losses, pollination fees and honey yields increase, beekeepers’ ledgers (labour vs income) might show a gain, hence justifying fogging once a week.

To be continued ….

9.00 am. The sun’s shining. God must have used his hive tool to scrape the sky clean because there isn’t a single burr cloud in sight. No wind either. A perfect day for starting my career as an assistant beekeeper. In front of me in an arc formed by a poplar wood are 38 hives arranged in groups of four on pallets. Makes my two hives in Normandale seem pathetic. Most of the hives are seven full depth boxes high. A stretch even for someone a sliver under 1.8 metres tall. More than a stretch for my stocky Mexican workmate, Alvaro, who is almost a head shorter than me. The bees are already busy flying back and forth to the yellow fields of Canola that are flowering nearby. I’m kitted out in an unfamiliar bee veil and coveralls. The bee veil and safety helmet don’t feel comfortable despite my many adjustments in the cab of the van as we journeyed to the beeyard, a half-hour’s drive from the honey house. This is the moment of the truth. This is what I came half way round the world to Canada to do. But there’s no time for nerves. I begin to unload the fume boards from the bosses’ truck and carry them with a firm step into the beeyard and spread them underside up so the boss can trickle Bee-Go (Butyric Anhydride) onto them, before they’re placed on top of the hives to drive the bees out of the supers.

Around me my three co-workers, one of whom is the boss, Terry Fehr of Meadowlark Honey Ltd, are busy going about their allotted tasks. Cam, 31, tall, lean and athletic, is unloading stacks of pallets and empty supers from the van that’s been hired for the duration of the harvest.

Alvaro and Terry, the boss, are lighting the smokers that each of them will use. Once the smokers are lit, Terry dribbles Bee-Go onto the fumeboards from a plastic container. In the meantime, I’m distributing the unloaded pallets around the beeyard to stack the supers on as they’re taken off the hives and every now and then rushing back to the truck to steady stacks of boxes being lowered to the ground on the hoist at the rear.

When I’ve finished distributing the pallets, it’s time to start putting the fume boards on the hives. The smell of Bee-Go makes my eyes smart as I hand fume boards to Terry, who takes off the telescopic hive lids, smokes the bees crawling around on the top box, and scrapes the gluey propolis off with his hive tool. We talk beekeeping as we go from hive to hive. The fume boards are placed askew on the hives as in this heat the Bee-Go can drug the bees and cause them to become sluggish. More smoke is puffed under the raised corner of the lid and then the Bee-Go is left to do its work. Elsewhere in the beeyard, Alvaro is doing the same. Soon all 28 fume boards are in place. Already, from the hive entrances of some of the hives, there’s a tongue of bees, refugees from Bee-Go, starting to lick the bottom edge of the second box. Soon there’ll be a million of them in the air, whirling about us like hot cinders. We’ll all get our fair share of stings, although today my share might be a little unfairer than everyone else’s.

I take out my hive tool and crack the top two boxes apart. Awkwardly I lever the topmost box forward until I can get the back of my palm under the edge and raise it up a few inches. This one is mostly clear of bees. Now for the tough bit. The bottom of this box is about level with my eyebrows and is heavy with honey.

I walk the box further out until it’s a little over half way off then I tip it forward until I can slide the front of the box onto the upper end of my sternum. Taking a good grip on the rear corners of the box with both my hands, I slide the box completely off the hive and lower it, resisting the weight of the box to slow its descent, while I step back and swing round like I’m twirling a reluctant dance partner, and deposit the box on the pallet that I’d earlier lain on the ground behind me. Man, what a gut-buster. No wonder Alvaro and Cam are wearing weight-lifting belts! Then I take the fume board off the box on the pallet and place it on the next box down on the hive.

Around me the others are doing the same. Already I’m sweating profusely. The stacks of boxes on the pallets grow quickly. Mostly, they’re five high but sometimes we place an extra box on a stack rather than create half stacks that would take up too much room on the truck. On this round of the beeyards we take four boxes off each hive and put three empties back on in their place so they’re left six boxes high. On the next round, we’ll take off three, and put back two. On the third and last round in four week’s time, we’ll take off the same number and put none back on, leaving them two high for wintering. In one beeyard, later in the day, the boss points out some hives that have Russian Queens, little czarinas. I can’t see any difference between their offspring and those in other colonies. Perhaps, if you have a sharp enough ear you can hear them buzzing in Russian, and possibly with a tot or two of vodka in their sugar syrup to get them through winter. In this part of Canada the temperature can drop down to a very Siberian minus 30 celcius.

Forget all you’ve read about how much capped honey there should be in a frame before taking the honey off. Boxes are harvested regardless and only very light boxes are put back on the hives. No queen excluders are used on established hives and boxes with brood are also taken off along with the honey and ripening nectar unless worker brood is detected and then frames are switched with empty ones in one of the boxes on a hive that’s been harvested. Inevitably a great number of bees and brood are still taken back to the honey house at the end of the day.

Once we’ve finished harvesting some of the hives, the spare fume boards are placed on the rest of the unharvested hives and Alvaro and I continue to take off full boxes of honey. Meanwhile, Cam and Terry are starting to load the stacks of harvested boxes into the van. Terry handles the power truck himself as it’s a temperamental beast and he knows its moods best. Cam is up on the deck, using a hand truck, to organise the stacks so that the load is tight. The full boxes are in stacks five high and arranged down one side of the deck and the empties down the other. Loading is still going on when Alvaro and I finish harvesting the remaining honey. While the loading is being completed, we collect up the fume boards and stow and fasten them in the carrying boxes on the back of Terry’s truck. By now it’s at least 30 degrees Celsius and I’m basting in my own juices. Thank god I thought to wear a sweat-band!

In 90 minutes we’ve completed harvesting the yard, loaded up the trucks and I’m riding up front with Cam in the cab of the van. The air-con’s cranked up full-bore, despite the warning of the boss who is worried we’ll catch colds. The radio’s blasting out rock ‘n roll from the seventies, and we’re singing a ragged accompaniment. I’ve long since taken off my hat and veil, and am fiddling with it again, as all through that first beeyard it kept slipping forward off my head whenever I bent over – something it does throughout the entire season, frustrating every effort I make to stabilize it. I’ve already gulped down a litre of water to replace what I’ve lost through sweating. I’ll drink 4 litres by the end of the day and sweat so much I won’t need to take a single pee which is fortunate for around beeyards exposing oneself can be a hazardous experience, and not just from bees – there’s poison ivy and stinging nettle to be feared as well. My hands are lumpy from stings but the pain’s gone and I’m feeling pretty good, and the frustrations of my desk job in NZ are too far away to spoil my mood.