Shropshire Beekeepers' Association

 

 

Newsletter : July-August 2008

1.      Editor's Notes

Fortunately the members of SBKA are by now accustomed to my mistakes, otherwise I would have had cutting comments about recording last month, on the front cover of a Newsletter printed on bright red paper (for those who still receive the printed version) that this year’s queen colour is yellow! Apologies for that. It is, of course, red (although I always mark mine in white because, for those of us who are colour-blind, it easier to see). Sorry! The artificial swarm I reported on last month seems to have been successful. I hope it will build up into another good-sized colony by the end of the season to replace last winter’s losses. This month I am trying Celia Davis’s suggestions for creating a nucleus by taking a laying queen away from a strong colony, with accompanying brood & foragers, leaving the others to bring on an unsealed queen cell to replace her. If all goes well, these manoeuvres will bring my apiary back to the 6/7 colonies I like to keep it at. We shall see.

The next apiary meeting is on Saturday 12th July at Radbrook (2.30 p.m.) when the topic of interest will be “Queen rearing on a small scale”. It is difficult not to be anxious about the welfare of queens, especially if you only have one or two colonies. The article on ‘Queenlessness’ opposite has some good advice. For the answer to all your other questions, be there on Saturday.

SBKA members need no reminder about our major public event of the year: the Shrewsbury Flower Show on 15th/16th August. Please respond to Ray Green’s appeal for help with setting up/dismantling if you can. In order to clear the decks for this event we do not have an apiary meeting in August - and this will also be the last Newsletter until September.

Finally, I have attached a link to the DEFRA consultation paper on the future of its ‘Bee Health Strategy’. A printed copy can be requested from: Bee Health Strategy Consultation, Bee and Plant Health Division, Defra, Foss House, 1-2 Peasholme Green, York, YO1 7PX Tel: 01904 455186 or can be accessed here. The deadline for responses (17 questions plus the opportunity to add further comments) is 31st August 2008 - so there is still time to have your say!

2.      Flower Show 15 & 16 August

In just over a month it will be time for the Flower Show once again. It's not too late to enter any of the classes of the Bees, Honey & Wine Section (entries close 28th July). Please have a look through the schedule and consider entering at least one class. If you need a schedule, please contact Brian Goodwin (01743 884524).

We would be grateful for help in setting up during the previous week. If you can help, even for part of a day, please let me know (01743 465079). We are also looking for stewards over the two days of the show. Again if you can help at all, please contact Graham Roberson (01938 570130).

As in previous years, we will be having a Honey Tasting and Sales area. If any members of the Shropshire Associations have any honey that they would like included in this area, please let me know.

We are looking forward to another successful show where we can give members of the public an insight into the fascinating world of beekeeping. Your help in this is much appreciated. Many thanks
Ray Green

3.      Queenleesness   Len Dixon

The reasons for queenlessness at this time of year normally result from natural re-queening (i.e. swarming, to the likes of you or me). 'Queenlessness' arises because a queen gets lost during a mating flight (which actually rarely happens) or meets some other accident. (That probably means something silly done by the beekeeper, like checking a colony too soon after a virgin queen might have emerged). But more often than not I believe the queen is there all the time - she's just not laying.

There are several reasons for this. First, it might simply be a case of impatience on the part of the beekeeper. New queens frequently don't start laying straight away. Once emerged they require a few days to mature before their subjects decide enough is enough and pack them off on mating flights. Once mated, it can take some time before a new queen begins to lay. So frequently what anxious beekeepers describe as queenlessness is nothing more than a delay in the commencement of egg-laying.

That's why I suggest that no action should be taken, at least in the short term. Wait for at least a week to see what happens. Then, before tearing the colony apart, watch the front of the hive to see what is going on and whether pollen is being brought in. If it is then all is probably likely to be well. A second good sign is shiny cells in the brood area. If you see these when checking for a new queen then it pretty certain she's there; the bees are preparing cells for her to lay in. Note the bees' behaviour, too. If they are comparatively calm and quiet, you can be pretty sure they aren't queenless. There's no guarantee, though, because there may be other problems, which I will touch on below.

If there seems to be undue delay in the commencement of egg laying, before anything else, try inserting a frame of eggs and very young larvae into the centre of the brood area and leave them for three or four days. If a colony is queenless they will fairly quickly begin to correct the situation by building queen cells. Frequently, when checking the result one finds that the new queen has begun to lay; the new eggs seem to provide the necessary urge to get her going. (That's one good reason for having at least two colonies.) If there are indeed queen cells, you were right, they were queenless.

Some people try to solve swarming simply by removing queen cells. However, if bees are going to swarm, this won't stop them. They are likely to get so frustrated that they'll go even if a queen cell isn't sealed. So if all cells are continually destroyed when a colony is checked, queenlessness is an almost certainty. And I'm afraid people still try it.

Of course actual queenlessness isn't the only problem. Sometimes, for one reason or another (long spells of bad weather is a common one), a queen is not fertilised properly, which results in either all-drone brood or a mixture of drone and worker brood in the worker brood area. Sometimes the bees will correct this themselves by requeening again. Often, though, the colony dwindles and if it is to be saved the beekeeper needs to requeen it. Before doing so the faulty queen must be removed. After doing so insert a frame of eggs from a good colony to allow them to requeen themselves.

One of the most serious problems is laying workers. This happens after a colony has been queenless for some time. The lack of queen pheromone no longer prevents workers' ovaries from developing and several workers begin to lay. Any eggs that hatch and develop will be drones. The most obvious signs are multiple eggs, often many, in each cell scattered throughout the brood area. A drone-laying queen usually keeps to a reasonable pattern; laying workers don't, laying quite randomly. This really is a problem because it is unlikely that the colony would accept a new queen even if introduced. And it's not possible to find and despatch the offending workers! Essentially the colony is doomed. To save the bees, if that's what one wishes to do, empty the colony out in front of a larger one and let those that can merge with it (providing, of course, you are sure that's all that is wrong with it).

So, if you think they're queenless, patience is a virtue. And don't be in too much of a hurry in the first place.
Reigate Beekeepers Newsletter July 2007 courtesy of BEES

4.      The All-Important Bees in the Biodiesel Equation  (Dr. Garth Cambray : Science in Africa (April 2007)

Problems associated with biofuels, and their impact on world food prices, have hit the headlines recently. The following article, edited from ‘Science in Africa’ (April 2007), also draws attention to the importance of bees for this activity.

With the rapid increase in the cost of conventional fuels, the devastating impact of burning fossil fuels on climate change and biodiversity, globally a sense of urgency has replaced the indifference of the 1990s in finding and developing alternative biofuel replacements. Flowering crops are an important source of raw material for replacement fuels biodiesel and bioethanol. What happens if we take the bees out of the biodiesel (or biofuel) economy? Biodiesel refers to that fuel made by reacting an alcohol, typically methanol, with a lipid, in the presence of catalysts, resulting in the creation of a fatty acid alcohol ester. These fuels perform well in a diesel engine, and are the most effective currently available fossil fuel substitutes for diesel engines. Bioethanol, produced by fermentation is the most effective fuel for petrol (gasoline) engines.

Current global biodiesel strategies tend to focus on growing oilseed crops to produce the vast quantities of oilfats needed to make biodiesel. The major oilseed crops are rapeseed and its cousin canola, soybean oil, palm oil, sunflower oil, jatropha oil and then more expensive oil crops such as cottonseed oil and peanut oil, which are too expensive to consider using for realistic biodiesel production.

Of that list, rapeseed, canola, sunflower, oil palm and cottonseed are all crops that require bees for pollination. Without bees, you have no biodiesel – in reality. Every seed from which these oils are extracted required at least one visit by a bee to produce the oil needed to make the biodiesel. For enough fuel to drive a vehicle 1km we are looking at 100's of millions of flowers being pollinated by bees.

As the world, and specifically the rather fuel hungry economies of North America and Europe decide more and more firmly to focus resources on developing a biofuel economy, less and less attention is being focussed on the foundation of this economy, the honeybee. As an example, the European Union has a strategy to ensure that 5.75% of transport fuels used in 2010 will be biofuels.

If policy makers and planners in major economies are to take biofuel investments, specifically in biodiesel, seriously, risks to the industry must be minimised. The risk of oil seed crop failure must be minimised in all ways so as to ensure a reliable supply of substitute fuel that will not bring disrepute to the biofuel industry.

[Read the original article here.]