Ayr and District Beekeepers Association Newsletter.
Contact Details: President: Tony Riome.
Vice President: Joyce Duncan.
Secretary/Treasurer: Lindsay Baillie.
Librarian: Suzanne Clark.
Editor: Suzanne Clark.
Telephone 01290 700 370
Email: .
January/February 2011.
Morag Gordon and her “Beeswax - works”
Morag and her husband David have been well known in beekeeping circles for many years, indeed it was Dave who introduced Phil to beekeeping back in the days when they were both youngsters. Morag, however, has additional strings to her bow.
Morag is a keen baker. Dave blames this for his ever expanding waistline. (not on eating the cakes then Dave!) Morag is also a skilled dressmaker having made her own wedding dress. She first became interested in dressmaking as a child, using scraps of material to dress her dolls while her mum was doing her own dressmaking.
Morag worked as a laboratory assistant for several years after leaving school.
Morag’s early days of exhibiting. ADBKA Exhibit at Ayr Dam Park. Part of the Scottish National Honey Show. Note the first prize certificate.
However, in beekeeping circles, Morag is widely known for her exquisite wax models.
The Ayr and District Beekeepers Association exhibited at Ayr Dam Park as part of the Scottish National Honey Show in the early 1980’s. This is where Morag began to exhibit her work. At that time wax exhibits were mostly moulded and gradually Morag’s wax flower exhibits became more elaborate.
In her early days of wax flower making, Morag’s facilities were basic household appliances: a cooker and oven; using greaseproof paper to work on as quickly as she could before the wax hardened.
On one occasion, Morag had the idea of making a globe of wax to indicate all the countries which make honey. She blew up a balloon and gradually covered it with wax – very carefully. All was going well. Unfortunately, just as she was nearing completion, the balloon exploded, sending warm wax all over the kitchen, and Morag. (All beekeepers know the horror of cleaning up beeswax.)
Morag’s exhibits were so admired that she was invited to show her work at other shows, the Lake District and Dundee being just two. The flowers are so fragile that transporting them for long distances is not possible so unfortunately Morag was unable to do this.
A small basket of flowers takes about three to four days to make. Each petal is made individually and hand painted thereafter.
Detail of Petals. A delicate Orchid.
Morag won the Barrie Trophy in 1995 and 1996 for the highest points in Wax Classes at the Scottish Beekeepers Association National Open Honey Show. She also won numerous first and second prizes over the years.
A selection of Morag’s work. The house started off on flat paper spread with wax, then folded over to give its three dimensional effect.
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Morag’s Good Shepherd.
SHAGGY BEE STORIES ....Supplied by Joyce Duncan.
Have you heard the one about the beekeeper who read his beekeeping books but when he tried to do some of the manoeuvres suggested found they didn’t work for him. Finally in frustration he threw the book down in front of the hive and proclaimed to the buzzing throng ‘HERE! READ THIS!’......
Or the one about the two old beekeepers who shared an apiary. One of them couldn’t make it to the routine inspection one day but as his pal parked the car near the apiary he spotted some ‘naughty’ magazines dumped at the side of the road. Not one to miss a joke he
took a couple and put them under the roof of one of the hives. At the next inspection he had forgotten all about it until he heard his amazed pal exclaiming ‘Come and look at what the bees have been reading!!’
NO MORE HONEY FOR OUR TOAST?
Sales figures suggest that the traditional breakfast staples of Seville orange marmalade, and honey, have had their day. Replacing them on the nation’s breakfast tables are the calorific spreads from America, which are particularly popular with children.
While jam remained popular as ever, sales of marmalade fell 2.8 per cent to 6.5 million gallons and honey sales by 1.9 per cent to 3.8 million gallons. Sales of chocolate spread and peanut butter, meanwhile, were both around the 4.9 million gallon mark, a rise of 8 per cent and 7.5 per cent respectively.
The industry figures, published in “The Grocer” confirm a long-running trend. Honey has suffered from rising prices due to declining bee populations, while marmalade has a serious image problem. More than half of those who buy it are aged over 65.
The Daily Telegraph Newspaper.
How Bees Make Queens
A Queen’s life starts as an egg high up in one of her mother’s tubes. The egg next to her in the queue is more likely to become a worker bee, with a relatively poor diet.
The queen egg hatches out into a larger cell and is immediately provided with royal jelly, rich in sugars and other nutrients, and nurse bees visit the queen larva ten times more often so that they are literally swimming in food.
The high sugar content is thought to trigger a higher food intake and hormonal changes, which in turn cause the full complement of queen characteristics to develop. This all takes place rapidly so that the daughter queen emerges on about the sixteenth day after the egg was laid, a full five days earlier than her worker sister.
Difference in cell size and orientation appear to be the trigger which makes the nurse bees feed some larvae royal jelly. Queen cells are large and face downwards worker cells are small and point sideways.
Once queen cells start to be built by the colony, they may not necessarily be completed, remaining at the “cup” stage. If the queen pheromones reach a low enough level so that each worker does not receive an appropriate dose, they will continue to build out the queen cells. In other words a high level of queen pheromones, more likely with a young queen, inhibits queen cell production.
Choice of Egg or Larva
Beekeepers use a variety of queen rearing methods. Many involve transferring female larvae from a colony with desirable characteristics (the breeder colony) into a colony especially set up to rear them. Transferring eggs has a lower rate of success. The receiving colony often fails to keep the eggs warm which results in their death.
The beekeeper should ensure that the larvae which are going to be reared into queens are fed as queens from a very early age. Newly hatched larvae are ideal but any up to the age of about 11/2 days (36 hours) are suitable. Larvae older that this have not been fed royal jelly for long enough and can be small underdeveloped “scrub” queens.
Splitting the colony in two can have the same result as the workers may choose an older larvae to nurture as a queen. She may even be so small she can squeeze through a queen excluder.
Lack of Queen Substance
The colony which will rear your queens is called the cell builder. There must be low levels of queen substance so that the worker bees will nurture the queen larvae rather than destroy them. This is achieved by making the cell builder queenless or it can be the second storey of a strong colony in which the queen is confined to the lower chamber by a queen excluder. The queen substance levels in this top box will be sufficiently low to prevent worker bees from destroying the queen cells.
Good Nursing.
Queen larvae must be looked after by plenty of nurse bees. These young bees nust have well developed glands to provide lots of royal jelly. They need ot have had a good diet, rich in protein, when they were larvae themselves. The hive should contain plenty of honey (or sugar syrup) and pollen to provide the building blocks for the queen’s food. Warmth and humidity are also needed to ensure the larvae survive. Only by having an abundance of nurse bees will these conditions prevail.
A Place to Grow.
Given the correct conditions, a young larva placed by the beekeeper in a cell which is of the size and shape of a queen cup will be fed royal jelly by the nurse bees. The sides will be built up with beeswax to produced a large queen cell pointing downwards.
Beekeepers can provide a suitable place in a variety of ways. Pressed wax cups can be bought or made by dipping wooden sticks 3/8inch in diameter several times into molten wax. Plastic cell cups are also available and appear to be perfectly acceptable to bees. Alternatively, worker cells containing larvae of the correct age are positioned so that they point downwards and have plenty of room for workers to expand their rims, as in the Miller and Alley methods.
Given these conditions, a batch of large and well nourished queen cells will result. These must be separated about two days before the first queen is due to emerge. If you forget, the first queen to emerge will destroy the others in their cells.
Bee Craft March 2007.
The True Significance of Winter Brood Rearing.
The recent scientific confirmation of winter brood rearing in the honey bee colony has real significance for the survival of over-wintering colonies in the present circumstances, despite the fact that many beekeepers doubt the idea of brood being reared in winter, winter brood rearing in the presence of the Varroa mite takes on a whole new dimension.
There is little doubt that the nicotinoid pesticides are deeply implicated in colony losses, however the mystery deepens when despite the argument that pesticides are the culprit, heavy colony losses are also being incurred in areas well away from intensive agriculture. The issue of winter brood rearing becomes a critical factor when these late winter/early spring losses are addressed.
Recent information coming from Germany advocates that the infestation level in any colony infested with Varroa should not exceed 50 mites at the end of December. A drop of 1 mite/2 days on the floor insert at this time seems to be a good indicator that a mite population of between 35 – 50 has been achieved at this time. If a fall greater than this is registered the colony MUST be treated immediately.
A simple calculation might illustrate the critical importance of low mite numbers in colonies in early winter: every larva produced as a result of winter breeding will be a target for a female mite, which will live for around two months.
The mite average reproduction rate is reckoned to be some 1.1 new mites per generation.
Consider a colony entering winter with a mite burden of 50; every 18 days the mite population will double; using mid December as a start date – best case scenario is that by mid January there will be 105 mites, by early February there will be 220, by the end of February 460, by late March 968 and by mid April 1800.
Now consider a colony with a mite population level of just 200 which is quite low by the current accepted standards of the “winter breeding hiatus”
Initially each developing winter larva will be “multiple parasitized”, every 18c days the mite population will increase dramatically and each emerging bee will be a total loss to the colony; using mid December as a start date – best case scenario is that by mid January there could be 500 mites, by early February there could be 1,250, by the end of February – 3,125, by late March 7,860 and by mid April 19,440. The figures postulated could be questioned but the order of increasing magnitude is indisputable.
It is unsurprising that many colonies entering the winter with mite burdens of over 200, especially in the possession of beekeepers who do not carry out their anti-mite treatments diligently or correctly, fail to survive past late winter or early spring.
The phenomenon of winter brood raring in the honey bee colony will be ignored at beekeeper peril. By ensuring that the mite has as few potential hosts on which to do her wicked work and really getting to grips with the necessary work of winter mite control – which entails any treatment method, applied at the correct time, that kills mites in the brood cells.
Formic acid is to date the only substance which does just that. Applied correctly around early April this treatment method could just be the tipping point to get your colonies through to summer to become an effective honey gathering force.
The effectiveness of any late winter treatment will have to be closely monitored to ensure that the mite burden is as low or ideally lower than recommended.
Thymol or oxalic acid treatment used correctly will achieve this aim.
Extracted from an article by Eric McArthur, The Scottish Beekeeper July 2009. (See “News Just In”)
The Summer Programme is now available.
SUMMER PROGRAMME 2011
Association Meetings & Out Apiary visits start at 2.00pm. Please call on 01292 570659 or check website to check if on or not. Decision will be made at 12 midday.
Date Venue
Saturday 9th April(or 16th if necessary) / Committee Meeting to check apiary..please note..ONLY committee members.
Saturday 23rd April / Association Apiary
Spring Clean and check of hives. Put on varroa inserts
Saturday 30th April / Association Apiary – Varroa check
Saturday 7th May
Sunday 8th May / Neilston Show
Association Apiary – Treating for varroa/Splitting for nucs?
Saturday 14th May
& Sunday 15th May / Ayr Agricultural Show
Observation hive /candle making/static display
(Bill & Suzanne to check apiary)
Saturday 21st May / Association Apiary
Swarm Prevention and check for queen cells, increase stocks
Saturday 28th May / Out apiary visit Ian Stirling’s Apiary.
Friday – Sunday
3rd, 4th and 5th June / Gardening Scotland – Ingliston Edinburgh
Observation hive /candle making/static display/open hive
Saturday 11th June
Sunday 12th June / Association Apiary
Celebrate Ayrshire - Culzean?
Saturday 18th June / Association Apiary
Saturday 25th June / Out apiary visit John Mellis’s Apiary.
Sunday 3rd July / Association Apiary
Saturday 9th July / Out apiary visit Les Morton’s Apiary.
Saturday 16th July / Association Apiary & Barbecue - Tony Riome’s
Saturday 23rd July / Association Apiary
Saturday 30th July / _
Thursday 4th (setting up)
Friday 5th, Saturday 6th &
Sunday 7th August / Ayr Flower Show
Saturday 13th August / Association Apiary
Getting ready for winter – apiguard/
Saturday 20th August / _
Saturday 27th August / Association Apiary
Getting ready for winter – apiguard
Saturday 3rd September / Scottish National Honey Show - Dundee
Saturday 10th September / SBA Autumn Convention
Saturday 17th September / Association Apiary – feeding bees
Winter Meeting TBC / How to treat with Oxalic Acid
Please consult the website weekly as the above may have to be changed.