Now that we have the Beginners Evening classes and the festive season behind us we are looking forward to preparing ourselves for the forthcoming season. With this in mind we have decided to start Study groups for those member beekeepers who have completed their first year in beekeeping and wish to help out at the Association Apiary, and also for anyone who is thinking of taking their Basic Assessment in Beekeeping this year.
The plan would be for each study group to go through Course in the Case (Novice version) to make sure that as and when we are teaching the beginners that we are all working from the same ‘Hymn sheet’. The idea is that the beginner is taught and practised the ‘Basics’ in beekeeping before ‘going it alone’. We will also be furthering the knowledge of those beekeepers that have progressed past the ‘beginners’ stage.
If you would like your name added as a participant please contact Lilian Valentine.
Posted in News, beeBlog
|
The Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects, School of Life Sciences, University of Sussex have a vacancy for a Honey Bee Research Facilities Manager. Closing Date for applications 17th January 2012
Come and meet members of The Vale & Downland Beekeepers’ Association where we will be selling locally produced honey and other related products.
You can see us at the Charlton Park Garden Centre on Saturday 26th November from 2 – 4pm.
The garden Centre is on Charlton Road (A417), Wantage, Oxon, OX12 8EP.
Please view the Google Map by CLICKING HERE.
You can also see us at the Wantage Church of England Primary School Christmas Fare on Tuesday 29th November from 3pm.
The school is on Newbury Street, WANTAGE, Oxon OX12 8DJ
Please view the Street Map by CLICKING HERE.
Posted in News, beeBlog
|
Tagged Event, Fare
|
Introduction to Beekeeping in Oxfordshire
The Vale and Downland Beekeepers’ Association’s 8 week course is aimed at people who want to learn more about bees or are interested in taking up beekeeping early next season and is based on the British Beekeepers Association’s ‘Introduction to Beekeeping’ syllabus. It is designed to equip students with the basic skills and knowledge that they will need to keep their own bees safely and productively. The lessons are classroom based and cover both theory and practice where we will look at the basics of beekeeping, hive construction and siting, managing bees, where to get bees and equipment and the importance of bees in the environment. The course runs from 13th October to the 8th December starting at 19:30 on a Thursday evening in Wantage and the cost is £25.
The tutors are John & Lilian Valentine and for more information or to book your place please contact Lilian Valentine:
Phone: 01235 767524
email: jvalentine515@btinternet.com
Posted in News, beeBlog
|
From the BBKA:
The BBKA would like to know how you got on this year… It’s been an interesting year for beekeepers. An early, warm spring after an exceptionally hard winter; then many beekeepers reported an unusually long ‘June gap’; parts of the country suffered drought conditions, while there were flash floods elsewhere…
Not surprisingly, as a consequence, there is great interest in what impact this has had on honey bees and honey supplies. Last year BBKA members reported an average of 32 lbs of honey per hive.
Please spare a few minutes to tell us about your honey crop this year and where your bees went to forage. The information will be used to help us build of a picture of this season’s honey crop and allow us to make year on year comparisons.
You could win a B&Q gift card worth £250 for taking part
We are hoping at least 1,000 of you will take part, and as encouragement, B&Q who are corporate members of the BBKA, have kindly donated a gift card worth £250 which will go into a prize draw for one completed questionnaire drawn from a hat.
It shouldn’t take more than five minutes to complete
Please reply by Friday 14th October 2011 at the latest and results will be published in BBKA News.
Thank you for taking part,
Brian Ripley, BBKA Chairman
CLICK HERE TO START THE SURVEY
Posted in News
|
Tagged BBKA, Honey Survey
|
In a season that appeared to have been more ‘swarmy’ than usual i have been incredibly lucky in that my bees have not swarmed. The swarmy season may have in part been caused by the warm and dry weather through April and May, which in fact turned out to be better than the summer and started the season with a bang.
My year has been completely focused on increase through queen rearing and so the slightest bit of swarming instinct that my bees have had has been channelled into this fruitful activity leaving all hives with new queens. Ordinarily i am sure by the time we get to mid September bees are not going to swarm. Feeding and varroa treatment are almost complete and only a few weeks to go before we baton down hatches for winter. Or so i thought.
At the apiary today the bees were really busy, with lots of pollen, i expect from ivy being bought into all 3 colonies on this site. In fact they were queuing up to get through the entrance blocks that are reduced to prevent wasps gaining entrance.
I also noticed some bees showing interest in the base of a small tree to the left of the hives. On closer inspection it appeared to be a swarm. I felt it necessary to find out which hive they would have come from and got lucky with the first hive, as it had far fewer bees than the last inspection. Curiosity settled but none the wiser as what to do, I had little equipment or anything that would help gather a swarm. Why now, why on earth have they decided to leave a hive filled with food with barely a few weeks before winter begins to set in, surely this bee suicide?
I returned later with a nuc hive to put the swarm in as i could only guess the bees must have left a new queen in the somewhat emptier hive and it would not be a good idea to try and put them back from where they have come from. The bees were not easy to collect, in fact they were impossible to collect from a tree with a trunk that can only be described as a bunch of large sticks, surround by chicken wire to keep out rabbits and it also being very windy. The few bees that were being brushed out of the tree as this was the only way of getting to them were just being blown away and flying immediately of the sheet to collect them. After about 15 minutes i had collected little more than a few handfuls each time placing them on a board to climb into the nuc. I am pretty sure i have not collected the queen and had to leave them, i guess i have 2 chances, the bees may decide that they would be better off in the original home, move into the nuc or look for something else?
Benjamin Crabb BSc(Hons); Lecturer at the Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Animal Science is looking for Beekeepers who are willing to complete the following survey.
The results the survey generates will be used for a research project currently being conducted at the University of Lincoln into the movement of bees and importance of the spray liaison scheme to beekeepers.
The survey should only take 2 – 3 minutes and your comments will be greatly received.
The survey can be accessed by clicking on the following link http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WMCDHS7
Thank you for your cooperation
Ben Crabb
Lecturer, Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Animal Sciences, University of Lincoln
Posted in News, beeBlog
|
Wasps are a real problem at the moment although I’ve seen a definite improvement since installing my home-made “waspinator” above the hive – it’s a fake nest which fools the wasps into thinking there’s already a wasp nest there; they are very territorial so they keep away. You can buy them for about £12 but I thought they looked just like a stuffed paper bag so that’s exactly what I did and hung it up. Seems to be working quite well.
Sadly, over at the Association beginners’ apiary last week we found that the wasps had overwhelmed one of the colonies. Alan’s hive was completely overrun by wasps – empty of stores and only a tiny shivering handful of bees were left protecting the queen. He put these into a nuc. to give them a chance of recovery but they didn’t look great, very sad.
Now that all the honey has been taken off, it’s time to treat my bees for another pest – Varroa. The Varroa mite is a parasite that attaches itself to the body of the bee, weakening it and spreading viruses such as “deformed wing virus”. Arriving in England only in 1992 it is now endemic and all colonies need treating regularly. I decided to use Api-Life Var to treat my bees – it’s a natural organic treatment that Thymol, Eucalyptus Oil, Menthol and Camphor)
Bees at the entrance
While having a quick look at the colony this week I was excited to see a bee “waggle dancing” – showing the the other bees where to find forage. I quickly grabbed the camera and took a bit of video – you can see her in the middle, waggling and doing a figure of eight kind of movement!
Waggle Dance Video
The bees have been flat out for the last two or three weeks collecting from the Himalayan Balsam, so I was lucky enough to get another super of honey off last weekend. Not all the frames were completely full and capped and I reckon if I’d left it on another week or two they’d have filled it to the brim but I’m keen to get varroa treatment started which takes four weeks and needs warm weather to be effective.
I ordered a sweet little extractor from Fragile Planet bee supplies. It’s a two frame tangential extractor which you can work using an electric screwdriver to save on turning the handle but I couldn’t get mine to attach so ended up doing it the hard way after all!
Uncapping the honey
Here’s a photo of me uncapping the honey with an uncapping fork – this seemed a much neater way of doing it than with a knife, much less damaging to the drawn wax. Unfortunately, we were a bit over-keen with the spinning and the first two frames we put in fell apart were completely ruined. It did clearly say on the instructions to spin gently at first to avoid the weight of the honey breaking the wax but we didn’t read that until it was too late!
Foundation/comb fallen to bits in the extractor
I managed to extract about ten pounds of honey and put it into smaller jars as I gave it all away so quickly last time! I don’t think it tastes quite as good as my first crop – it’s still a really nice delicate flavoured light coloured honey but doesn’t have such a distinctive floral taste as my first batch.
lovely larvae
After a month of no brood in Hive 1 I was thrilled to see it chock a block this week with gorgeous, juicy looking larvae and eggs! What a relief. I also spotted the new queen who’s doing a great job and carried on laying as I watched her.
All good too over at Mum’s, after a tricky week dealing with wasps almost overwhelming the nuc. We had a nasty incident with rat glue (a wasp catching tip from a beekeeping forum). However, NEVER use rat glue – it’s horrible stuff and the only thing we caught was a poor little wren.
We inspected the nuc nine days after the virgin queen was released from the queen cage and all seems to be going really well. We spotted her strutting around quite happily and looks like she’s mated OK as there were a few eggs too.
She's a babe! (Queen in the middle of pic)
We transferred the frames from the nuc into a proper hive and also moved it a couple of feet forward to enable better access. It only occurred to me afterwards that it would have been better to have done this in two steps (into new hive, then move it a few days later). Quite a few bees were hovering over the old site seeming confused but Mum said they were happily flying in and out a couple of hours later.
My swarm (Hive 2) seems to be dwindling out of existence. As the queen seems to have disappeared maybe she swarmed again soon after I got them taking half the bees? I reckon I’ll take them over to Mum’s and combine them with the nuc. Hopefully I’ll get this done in the next few days as I need to crack on with varroa treatment next week.
