Hon. Newsletter Editor:
Peter Edwards
E-mail: beekeepers@stratford-upon-avon.freeserve.co.uk

A Very Happy New Year to You All!

ANNUAL DINNER

A booking form for the Annual Dinner is enclosed with this newsletter.  If you wish to attend it is essential that you complete the form and return it to our treasurer, Will Spencer, by 20 January enclosing a cheque for the full amount (i.e. £22.50 per person) made payable to SBKA.  The menu will be available on arrival at the Arrow Mill and will be similar to last year.
Peter Edwards

NATIVE BEES

This month I am very pleased to be able to send you all a copy of an article by Dr Dorian Pritchard about our native black bee.  Dr Pritchard, who is based at the University of Northumberland, is a leading authority on Apis mellifera mellifera, President of SICAMM (The International Association for the Protection of the European Black Bee) and is Conservation Officer for BIBBA.
I was fortunate to meet Dorian at Apimondia in Dublin and am indebted to him for permission to reproduce this article in which he makes such a convincing case for native bees.
Please note that, with colour photocopies at over £1 each, I have saved a considerable sum of money by printing it myself in draft quality!
Peter Edwards

WARNACT

This month I have also enclosed a flyer about the Warwickshire Nature Conservation Trust (WARNACT) which kindly allows us to site our apiary in its reserve.  Please consider supporting WARNACT by joining if you are not already a member.
Peter Edwards

APIMONDIA, 9-14 SEPTEMBER 2007

I am very conscious that I have not yet had the time to write about my experiences at Apimondia 2005 in Dublin – and now I am receiving information about Apimondia 2007 in Melbourne!  Of course, travel to Dublin was a little easier - and cheaper - than Melbourne; those bees are going to have to work very hard…

The Apimondia website is: www.apimondia2007melbourne.com/
Peter Edwards

THE QUEEN'S FLIGHT

We are familiar with the situation in which a queen 'goes missing' when we are trying to find her in the hive, but occasionally she gets lost outside the hive, and that can be quite exciting.  In the days when I was involved with BIBBA, I was with its founder Beowulf Cooper when he was examining a hive in his apiary.  Somehow the queen dropped off the comb into the grass, and it took a few minutes on hands and knees to find her.  But the really memorable occasion is when the queen takes off from the comb and disappears.  My first experience of this was at an apiary meeting at Will Spencer's.  He has reminded me that it was about 17 years ago, Brian Donley was there, and he took charge, advising all present to stay still and wait for her to return, which she did.  (After all, where else could she go?).

The second time this happened to me was at my apiary meeting on 5 June, when the discovery of sealed queen cells in a colony prompted the making of an artificial swarm.   Remarkably, the old queen, marked last year, was still there, so the comb she was on was put to one side while the new hive was being prepared.  That done, the comb with the queen on it was about to be added to the empty combs when she flew off! Fortunately, there were seven pairs of eyes to watch for her to return, which she did, but then flew off again.  After three or four minutes, when it looked as if she really had gone, a sharp-eyed member of the party spotted her in a little cluster of bees a couple of yards from her original hive, to which she was returned.

One does not expect a mature queen to behave like that, but I should have realised that, being on the point of swarming, she would have been slimmed down.  It's interesting that no bees from the colony attempted to follow their queen, yet in a swarm they very soon recognise her presence and form a cluster.  Funny things, these pheromones! A fortnight later, the errant queen was laying well again, with brood about to be sealed.  Let's hope that she will still be there on 3 July!   (Denis wrote this last June – the queen was still there! PE)
Denis Keyte

Footnote:
I, too, have had the same thing happen – three times!  Yes, I know, once is careless…

The first time was when we had the Association bees at Stratford College and there was one particularly nasty colony.  I was re-queening one of my own colonies in an apiary just a few hundred yards away and decided to use the ‘spare’ queen to re-queen the bad Association colony.  On arrival at the Association apiary I opened the cage to clip and mark the ‘spare’ queen and was more than a little surprised when she took to the air.  I did not expect her to fly very far as she was in full lay and very heavy, but she slowly circled and gained height - eventually setting off over the rooftops in the direction of home!  I quickly went back to my apiary and soon found her back in her old hive.  This was a queen that was over one year old, but could still navigate back to her hive.  Had she remembered her mating flight, or had she flown since?

The second and third times also happened when I was introducing new queens, but on these occasions the queens would not have known the surrounding countryside.  I simply watched and waited for them to return and caught them when they pitched.

I now always open cages only in a vehicle after making sure that all the windows and sunroofs are firmly shut.  However, this is not without its problems as queens can still fly around in the vehicle and disappear into inaccessible places if you are not careful!
Peter Edwards

THE BIRDS AND THE BEES (AGAIN!)

I wrote about the birds and the bees in December 2004 and March 2005.  Now for a story with a slightly different twist.

Last May I was busy with swarm control work in an apiary at Snitterfield and needed to split a double brood colony.  My usual practice is to put the supers on the upturned roof and then borrow the roof from the hive next door as a stand for the top brood box.  By smoking the colony from the bottom the queen often moves into the top box so, if you work quickly and do not use much smoke across the top, the queen is often found in the top box and you do not have to search both boxes.

On this occasion, one hive in the apiary was empty, so I borrowed the extra roof from it.  Imagine my surprise when, on lifting the roof, I found that the crown board was covered in a deep layer of moss liberally interspersed with pieces of polystyrene that had served as insulation; in the middle of this was a nest with young that had obviously only just hatched.  I put everything back together, borrowed a roof from another hive and quickly finished my work with the bees; then I sat in the Land Rover – camera at the ready.  A blue tit soon arrived and, after making sure that the coast was clear, entered through the ventilation hole in the side of the roof (the mesh had rotted away and was due for replacement).

On subsequent visits to the apiary I made inspections of the birds (after making sure that the parents were out foraging) as well as the bees and was able to get some good photographs (on the website version of this newsletter).  I am pleased to be able to report that they all seemed to survive and flew the nest after a couple of weeks.

Perhaps it is appropriate here to remind you that now is the time to put up nest boxes and that good boxes can be obtained at very reasonable prices from the Loft Workshop, which is situated at the end of Avenue Farm Road, inside the Council Yard on the left-hand side, and is open 9am-1pm Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.  Telephone 01789 297907. Website: www.stratfordvbx.org.uk.
Peter Edwards 

STARTING BEEKEEPING

Why did I suddenly take up beekeeping at the age of 50?  I suppose the simple answer is my wife, Sainsbury's and Manuka honey!

We have always liked honey but were never particularly impressed with the standard 'supermarket' runny honey until one day last September she was in Sainsbury's and spotted a rather expensive jar of Manuka honey from New Zealand. Absolutely delicious and we are now addicted!

This also triggered off subsequent conversations about honey and beekeeping bearing in mind we are fortunate enough to live in a lovely part of the Warwickshire countryside with plenty of garden space.

A quick search around the internet produced masses of information including links to Stratford Beekeeping Association and I suppose the rest is history.

I also found the 8 week 'Introduction to Beekeeping' course run by Warwick & Leamington branch helped to confirm my interest and support from SBKA over the last few months has played an important part in getting me started.

As a novice in my first season I still feel very light on the 'knowledge' front and must spend some more time with 'experienced' beekeepers to boost the confidence levels.  Having said that the one thing I have learnt is that there are many opinions and variations to the art (science?) of beekeeping!
Colin James