First a reminder about the two-day activity
at Coolings when we hope to
be able to recruit some new beekeepers. It is on June 23rd/24th
and we
need members to turn up so that there is always someone available to
answer questions and hopefully sell some of our produce. Please spare
some time if you can and let Tony Trinick (01689 820838) know when you
can turn up, so that he can produce a rota. Don't forget that it would
be nice to have honey etc for sale on both days.
For our demonstration on May 19th we were fortunate to welcome William
S. Munday, currently President and Vice-Chairman of the KBKA, and
Chairman of Dartford branch. Since he has been a beekeeper for
sixty-five years, he really knows what he is talking about. It was
therefore very gratifying for him to give our bees a clean bill of
health and to compliment us on the standard of the hives. Credit here
to
Peter Kirby, Jim Grierson and all the other helpers.
During the tea party afterwards he answered questions, and two in
particular I noted. Firstly, his method of dealing with a colony which
is preparing to swarm is to split it between two brood boxes, making
sure that there are frames of brood in both and to arrange the new
box
over a Snelgrove board, with the original box, queen excluder and
supers
beneath. He said that it didn't matter which box the queen was in,
since
you will soon see which one contains eggs, but it seems to me that
it
would be better to have the queen and no queen cells in the lower
box
and two selected queen cells in the upper. The entrances on the
Snelgrove board can be used to divert flying bees to the bottom box.
When the new queen has hatched and is laying, kill the old queen and
re-combine the two boxes (no newspaper required since all the bees
have
the same scent)
Secondly, he advised against clipping the queen, since once the swarm
takes place, the queen is lost to the colony and the chances are that
a
swarm with a virgin queen will emerge. This queen will have been well
fed in comparison with the original and is likely to fly a lot further
making collection that much more difficult.
Once again, the catering left nothing to be desired and our Chairman,
Kit Erhardt and the members thanked all the ladies concerned.
I don't often have the chance to offer something for nothing. This
time
I can! Tony Fisher is giving away a stainless steel extractor having
slots for ten radial frames, or by use of plastic screens, it can
be
modified to be tangential for four deep frames or possibly two jumbo
Langstroths. Tony thinks that one of the plastic screens may be missing
and that the control unit for the electric motor doesn't work. If
you
are interested, please telephone him on 01689 857139.
I recently received a nice letter from Rothamsted about the varroa
samples I sent last year. Apparently the viruses detected in the varroa
were Cloudy Wing Virus and Deformed Wing Virus, the most common ones
amongst the samples sent in. Acute Paralysis Virus and Slow Paralysis
Virus were found in few samples - only two samples for the former,
and
4% for the latter.
I have received schedules and entry forms for the Kent Show, which
this
year is from July 12th-14th, with entries closing on July 5th.
As usual,
I will be happy to take along your entries and retrieve them afterwards
so you have no excuse!
A reminder for Committee members - the next meeting is on Friday
June
8th at 23, Woodland Way, 8.00pm.
On Saturday June 16th, the demonstration at the Apiary will
be by
Godfrey Munro, who will be "Looking at Things Differently"
so it should
be very interesting. A barbecue at the house of Gordon and Jackie
Harradine will follow this. Let us hope for fine weather!
Frank E-Mail: fachap@pell97.freeserve.co.uk
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