Newsletter April 2006
1. Editor's Notes
I have to start this month's notes with an apology for the mistake in the March Newsletter, which announced that that month's meeting would be in October! Fortunately the members of SBKA have more sense than to be fooled by that and so the March meeting was in fact very well attended. I tried to make amends by emailing as many members as I could with a correction. Some of those messages were 'bounced back' because the address on file was no longer correct. In addition, we do not have email addresses for about half the membership. It would be useful to update this part of our database, so I am including with this mailing a note of our record of your email address. If this is incorrect, or if you have acquired a new email address that you would be prepared to let us use, please send me a message here.
I am planning to put up some information on 'Swarming' on our website. Part of this will be for the benefit of members of the public who want to find a beekeeper prepared to come and remove a swarm. It would therefore be helpful to post a list of members willing to respond to any such request. If we can achieve county-wide coverage that would be particularly useful. If you would be willing to have your name (and a contact 'phone number) posted in this way please let me know.
From time to time we are contacted by agricultural contractors who are going to be spraying crops with herbicides or insecticides. Brian Goodwin has volunteered to act as spray-liaison co-ordinator, so if you have colonies that might be vulnerable to such activity and would want to be advised when spraying is planned, please let him know where your apiary is. The most useful information for him is a six-figure Ordnance Survey reference - but if you cannot supply this, please give as many details as you can about the site and he will pass on any relevant information.
2. Next Meeting
The next indoor meeting is the last of the current season. It is on Wednesday 12th April at 7.30 p.m. in the Rosa Room at Radbrook, when John Perkins* will talk to us on the subject of the Instrumental Insemination of queens. If you have ever wondered how on earth this is done, this is the meeting for you.
N.B. * Congratulations to John for having recently passed his Intermediate Beekeeping exam
The May meeting is the beginning of our apiary programme. It will be on Saturday 13th May, beginning at 2.30 p.m. at the relocated Radbrook apiary (directions next time). As usual for this first outdoor meeting there will be an opportunity to buy & sell equipment and materials.
3. Last Meeting
Dave Sutton, the Acting Bee Diseases Officer for the Western Region, was our welcome guest in March. Some of the content of his review was reported in the February Newsletter but he was able to add more detail and give us advice about what the focus of our efforts should be this coming season. Dave began by emphasising the size of the task that he and his colleagues face each season. The Western Region stretches from Bristol in the south up to Manchester in the north and from Wales in the west across to the far borders of Staffordshire in the east. Given that the region was understaffed throughout the whole of last season, the number of visits paid to Shropshire had to be markedly curtailed. Normally he and his colleagues would inspect up to 1200 colonies in the county whereas last season they were only able to look at about 300.
The good news was that only one instance of EFB was seen - and none of AFB. The bad news was that colony losses from winter starvation and from untreated varroa invasions were very high. Dave emphasised the need to check for varroa frequently and to take action as soon as possible if the number of mites is building up quickly. If you leave it until you see deformed bees (e.g. with poor wing development) it is probably already too late to save that colony. Checks should include screening for pyrethroid resistant varroa as there is evidence that they are spreading across the region.
New Bee Diseases Orders come into force in March. Varroa is no longer notifiable but the brood diseases still are. So, if you suspect that EFB/AFB might be present in a hive you should contact Dave, who will arrange an inspection and recommend appropriate action. The 'shook swarm' treatment is usually applied for EFB until July but antibiotics will probably be required for outbreaks identified later in the season than that. AFB, of course, is only treatable by destruction of the colony.
Another notifiable invader is the Small Hive Beetle. So far it has not appeared in this country, though it is now wide spread in the Americas. Dave showed us a video about this new pest, which detailed the American experience. If (or more probably when) it arrives here, it will need strict vigilance to protect colonies from destruction. There are no successful chemical treatments available so far. The physical destruction of larvae and scrupulous hygiene and apiary management will be the only safeguards.
Dave closed an excellent talk with reference to the fact that Inspectors are being asked to increase the sampling of honey for chemical residues. So far all the samples taken in our region have been found to be completely clear of contamination, which he confidently expects will continue to be the case.
4. The Use of Honey Bees to track Land Mines
Landmines kill and maim tens of thousands civilians a year, 30-40% of whom are children. Moreover, although it costs only a few dollars to lay a landmine, it can cost many hundreds of dollars to find and remove it. Faster and cheaper methods for clearing minefields are desperately needed. Writing in Optics Express, Joseph Shaw and colleagues report progress in the use of Lidar, a detection and ranging technique similar to radar that uses laser light instead of radio waves to locate the position of honeybees that have been trained to find explosives buried in a minefield.
Landmines leak trace amounts of explosive chemicals into the soil and air around them. The ability of sniffer-dogs to distinguish such chemical signatures at concentrations down to one part per trillion and below, provides one means of locating buried mines. But it is costly and time-consuming to train the dogs, and their potential to inadvertently trigger a mine while conducting a search puts them and their handlers at significant risk. In contrast, recent work by the same group suggests that honeybees, which posses a similarly sensitive sense of smell to that of dogs, could be just as effective at locating mines, but at lower cost, in greater number, and with minimal danger.
Honeybees can be trained to seek out a given chemical by adding it to their syrup feed. This encourages the bees to form an association between the scent of the chemical and a source of food, which in turn causes them to fly towards and around any source of that chemical that they find in their natural foraging behaviour. To take advantage of the bees' mine finding talent, it is vital to be able to locate them remotely.
To track the movement of bees over a minefield, Shaw and colleagues have developed a scanning Lidar system based on one that had previously been designed to locate fish. The authors' system consists of a pulsed laser mounted beside a photomultiplier tube, both of which are scanned horizontally back and forth across the field in question. Individual bees are located by synchronizing the detection of scattered light with the timing of the emitted laser pulses and the position of the scanned beam. By detecting where many bees congregate over time, Shaw et al. are able to map the location of active (but unfused) mines in a 4424m field at a distance of 8 3m.
The finding of this research was that honeybees can be trained to locate landmines with an accuracy of better than 97.5%. Tracking them with laser-based radar could provide a fast and effective means of clearing the world's minefields.
(Copied [courtesy BEES] from Bee Talk, the Newsletter of the Blackburn & East Lancashire Branch of the Lancashire & North West Beekeepers Association. December 2005)
5. Some April Tasks
This is the month when beekeeping comes alive again, but deciding what to do depends very much on the temperature. As I write, it is only 10 degrees C, too cold to open the colony up for inspection. Rather, check that there is still enough food to keep the bees going. Even though early food sources are beginning to appear it may be too cold for the bees to go out to collect it.
Once the temperature goes up to, say, 15/16 degrees and the bees are beginning to fly well, a quick inspection can be carried out, checking for eggs and sealed brood in a good pattern. As the temperature approaches 20 degrees you can make a more thorough inspection, cleaning off the top bars and the floor from accumulated wax, propolis and other debris. This is also a good time, while colony numbers are still low, to find and mark the queen (white this year). Not everyone chooses to do this but I find that it makes later inspections easier, especially when taking steps to pre-empt swarming.
Prepare supers and be ready to put them on in advance of apparent need - at least two per colony, perhaps separated by newspaper so that the bees can access them when needed.
6. Round and About
Ludlow & District BKA: Sat 22 April - Beginners Practical - (to be confirmed). Bishop Mascall Centre. Further Information: Andy Vanderhook Tel: 01299 841379
Stafford Bee Group: Thursday April 6th: Bernard Diaper - Queen rearing by grafting. County Staff Club, Eastgate Street Details: Dave Battersby. Tel: 01543 503 933
Montgomery BKA:Wednesday 19 April 7.30pm. Plas Dolerw, Milford Road, Newtown. 'Disease identification'. Speaker: John Verran.
7. Committee Reports Jan/March 2006
8. Notices
British Beekeepers Association Spring Convention. Saturday 22nd April
There is still time for BBKA members to buy advance tickets for this event at a cost of £11 - a reduction of £3 over the price you have to pay at the door -which will give access to sixty trade, education, conservation and environment exhibitions, as well as a very varied programme of talks, including:
Venue: Stoneleigh Park Exhibition and Conference Centre: 09.00 - 17.00
Book Appeal
John Welch, who runs the website of the Oswestry Beekeepers' Association, has forwarded me a copy of the following email that he received recently:
Dear Sir,
We are Rural Development Centre (RUDEC )in Cameroon. We are carrying out beekeeping in our centre and wishes that your organisation support us with some reading materials that can support our library. We are saying so because the rural beekeepers need information from other areas.
Thanks for understanding.
CONTAT:Chiamba Joshua(co-ordinator)
RUDEC PO BOx 71Belo
Boyo Division
NWP-Cameroon
John is willing to take on the collection from donors. If you are able to help, please contact him direct on 01691 656413
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