Shropshire Beekeepers' Association

 

 

Newsletter : November 2008

 

1.      Editor's Notes

At the beginning of October I attended the BBKA Forum at Stoneleigh. This is the yearly ‘talking shop’ where issues that may come up to the decision making ADM meeting next January can be discussed or flagged up to the membership for comment at Association level. The first item on the agenda was to do with dealing with bees other than honeybees, especially if responding to a call-out to a supposed swarm. It was confirmed that members are covered by insurance for any unforeseen consequences if they choose to help with, say, the removal of a bumblebee colony provided, as always, that they have acted with commonsense. However, members are advised not to offer to deal with a wasp nest since the use of pesticides while providing a service requires a licence. Some members present were concerned about the actions of Pest Control agencies who are known to have used insecticides on invasive insects, which later affected honeybee colonies in the vicinity. One Association has taken positive steps to avoid this happening by running a course for local Pest Controllers to advise them about how to treat honeybees properly, should they come across them in their work.

Following requests at previous meetings, BBKA has investigated a system for allowing Association Secretaries/Treasurers to control the membership register directly by inputting all the necessary data via the Internet, rather than passing it to BBKA to deal with. The company providing the service is wholly owned by the NFU and has a number of high-profile users on its books. We were shown all the security features that protect the data from deliberate or accidental corruption. Among the merits of such a system is that it would allow reconciliation of Association/BBKA membership on a daily basis and could trigger the automatic issuing of welcome packs to new members. It would also allow for further developments, such as integration with the examination system or the BDI register. There would be some reduction in Head Office costs (probably currently equivalent to £2.5k) by outsourcing the membership register, but there would be a net increase in costs overall because of setting-up and annual maintenance charges (probably equivalent to an additional £1 on the annual capitation charge). It is likely that a proposal to adopt this approach to managing BBKA’s membership list will come before the ADM next January.

A member from Kent raised the issue of frustration that the addresses of apiaries where AFB/EFB had been found were kept confidential beyond reference to a 10km square. It was suggested that more detailed information would help associations to advise members about protecting or examining their own colonies if they were close by a known outbreak. We were informed that such freedom of information would clash with other standard regulations and was therefore not allowed.

In the October edition of BBKA News (p21) you can read the text of a proposal that the Executive will bring to the ADM relating to their current policy on endorsing certain pesticides as ‘bee-safe’ when administered in accordance with the manufacturers’ instructions. Of late there has been a co-ordinated campaign attacking this policy, which has previously been discussed and endorsed by the ADM. The strongest opposition, unsurprisingly, has come from those who believe that organic farming is the only acceptable approach to a sustainable agriculture. Many other members take the view that pesticides and herbicides are not likely to vanish from the farming scene and that a policy of close control is a more realistic goal. Strong feelings are often aroused in this debate and it is unfortunate that misinformation is sometimes circulated to try to influence others’ views. The Executive has therefore prepared a proposal offering a ‘step-by-step’ approach to policy that will be debated in January. I expect that we will take a view of this at our own forthcoming Committee meeting. If you have a point to make that you would like taken into account, please let a Committee member know.

 

2.      October Meeting Report

The October meeting was our AGM. The Committee for the coming year was elected. Stuart Foster was elected Treasurer in succession to Roger Evans, whose stewardship of the Association’s finances for many years was much appreciated. Other officers are unchanged. In addition to those named on p.8 of this Newsletter, the remaining Committee members are Tony Little (vice-chair), Robert Swallow (Apiary Manager), Peter Bound, Maxie Sinclair, Graham Roberson, Steve Jones, Glyn Williams, Mike Jones, Ivor Huckin and Dave & Anne Tuckley There was a proposal by the outgoing Treasurer that the capitation for membership be increased to £25 for full members and £10 for Associate members, which was agreed. This subscription is now due. Stuart Foster is posting out renewal forms, which members are asked to respond to as quickly as possible.

 

3.      November Meeting

Please note that the November meeting will take place at The Lantern Community Centre, Sundorne and NOT at the Shirehall. The Centre is on Meadow Farm Drive and the postcode is SY1 4NG.

There is a map here, from which you should be able to see that you can reach the Centre from either Sundorne Road or the Whitchurch Road, whichever is the most convenient (northern approach via the A49; southern approach via Castle Foregate/St. Michael’s Street/Spring Gardens/Ditherington Road to the Heathgates Island

The speaker is our RBI, Dave Sutton, who will be talking on the subject of ‘Minor Brood Diseases. We spend much of our time fretting over varroa and the foul-broods but our bees are also prey to many other problems which, if not managed, can seriously compromise their well-being and our honey crops. Come and hear Dave’s expert advice on this important topic.

 

4.      How Queen Bees Are Made. Do Environmental Factors Count?

Most beekeepers realise that diet is the key to causing fertilised larvae to develop into queens or worker bees but New research by scientists at the Australian National University may explain why eating royal jelly causes honeybee larvae to become queens instead of workers – and in the process adds new weight to the role of environmental factors in the nature/nurture divide.

Scientists from the Research School of Biological Sciences at the university have discovered that a copious diet of royal jelly flicks a genetic switch in young bees that determines whether they’ll become a queen, or live a life of drudgery. Their findings are published in the latest edition of the journal Science. “Royal jelly seems to chemically modify the bee’s genome by a process called DNA methylation and disrupts the expression of genes that turn young bees into workers,” explain the researchers.

When they ‘silenced’ a gene controlling DNA methylation without recourse to royal jelly, they discovered that the larvae began to develop as queens with the associated fertility, rather than as infertile workers. They believe this is the first time that DNA methylation has been functionally implicated in insects. The molecular process is common in vertebrates – including humans.

Dr Richard Maleszka, of the university explains that if you have identical human twins, and one develops schizophrenia, then you need another mechanism to explain how this can occur when they have the same genetic blueprint.

He goes on to say that DNA methylation links genomes to environmental factors like nutrition and modifies how genes express themselves. Discovering this in bees, which are a much simpler biological model than humans, means we have a better opportunity of understanding more about how this process occurs. The researchers will continue to study how DNA methylation affects bees, as they suspect that the process could also be responsible for how the insects’ brains develop, and may thus be connected to bee behaviour and even social organisation. The research suggests that environmental factors, such as how organisms are nurtured, can have a major influence on how they develop. The current work grew out of the honeybee genome project, which mapped the entire genetic blueprint of bees.
(This item was adapted from materials provided by The Australian National University & reprinted from Apis UK March 2008 by courtesy of BEES)

 

5.      Cleaning Porter Bee Escapes.         from Harrogate & Ripon Newsletter of May 2008 (courtesy BEES)

Now that the frenzy of honey-gathering is behind us it is probably a good time to think about some of those maintenance tasks that will make next season’s activities much easier. This article describes a simple way of restoring Porter Bee Escapes to their former glory.

If your porter bee escapes start to look like those shown in the picture on the right, then it is time to start to think about cleaning them up. Repeated use inevitably results in a build up of propolis and beeswax in and around the escapes, which will ultimately result in a failure to operate correctly. It is most frustrating to go back to a colony to collect the supers only to find them still bursting with bees.

The picture on the left shows the same bee escapes re-assembled after dismantling and stirring in a boiling solution of washing soda in an old saucepan for 2-3 minutes. One tablespoon of washing soda to the pint of water. NB washing soda, NOT caustic soda. The wax and propolis rapidly drop off the escapes.

 





6.      How Drones Find Queens

(Edited version of a project reported in APIS UK July 2008: Courtesy BEES)

We know that the mating ritual of the honey bee occurs on the wing and usually out of sight and hearing in what are known as Drone Congregation Areas, but how do drones find the queen in the vastness of the open sky. A research team led by the University of Illinois has now identified an odorant receptor that allows male drones to find a queen in flight. The receptor, on the male antennae, can detect an available queen up to 60 meters away. This is the first time an odorant receptor has been linked to a specific pheromone in honeybees.

The “queen substance,” or “queen retinue pheromone,” was first identified decades ago, but scientists have only recently begun to understand its structure and role in the hive. The pheromone is a primary source of the queen’s authority. It is made up of eight components, one of which (9-ODA) attracts the drones during mating flights. It also draws workers to the queen and retards their reproductive growth.

Principal investigator Hugh Robertson, a professor of entomology, said the research team pursued the receptor for the queen retinue pheromone because it was the “lowest hanging fruit” of the known honeybee odorant receptors. Robertson was among the research group that last year published the entire honey bee genome, a feat that allowed his lab to identify 170 odorant receptors in honeybees.

Robertson and his colleagues knew that male drones probably had little use for most of these receptors. The drones don’t forage and so do not need to detect the subtle scents of flowers. Their social role within the hive is virtually non-existent. They have only one task: to find and mate with a queen. Once they have accomplished this, they die. Researcher Kevin Wanner found four receptors that were expressed in much higher quantities in males than females.

“These proteins are expressed in the membranes of the olfactory neurons way up in the tips of these little sensilla in the antennae of these males,” Robertson said. “A neuron goes all the way from there to the brain. Now the brain gets a signal that says, ‘I’ve smelled this chemical.’ If the chemical is 9-ODA, for the drone that means one thing and one thing only: ‘There’s a queen somewhere!'

Determining which of the four primary receptors in males was actually responding to 9-ODA was a formidable challenge. By chance, at a conference on the science of olfaction, Wanner met Charles Luetje, a neuroscientist at the University of Miami who had expertise with precisely this type of problem. Luetje had perfected a technique for expressing mammalian odour-sensing receptors on the outer membranes of frog eggs and testing them to see which compounds activated them. When he heard of Wanner’s work in honeybees, Luetje offered to use this technique to test the four primary odour receptors of honeybee drones.

After refining and testing the technique in insects, the researchers found that only the 9-ODA pheremone component elicited a response in just one of the four receptors. Scientists have spent decades exploring the mysteries of insect smell, but the newest tools make such research much more promising. “Like so many biologists, we are wonderfully caught up in the genomic revolution .....(It) has opened up this black box of the molecular biology of insect smell. Finally now we can peer inside.”

(The APIS-UK Editor commented: “What I want to know though is how do drones find Drone Congregation Areas. When I researched these areas they were full of drones long before any queens arrived at them. The queen finding receptor would not be used in this case and I presume would only be used once a queen entered the area. Also, how do queens find DCAs?)

 

7.      Don’t Forget the Mouse!

The other day I needed to return something to my beekeeping toolbox. A sudden rustling as I opened the lid prompted further investigation. Three mice, which had managed to squeeze through a small hole created by too close a contact with a hot smoker, gazed up at me in irritation at having their autumn plans interrupted. Memo to self: check that the hives are properly protected against mice. Now!

 

 

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