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

Sunday 5 May, 3pm. Apiary meeting at Denis Keyte's house.

Friday 17 May, 7.30pm. Committee meeting at Terry's house.

Sunday 19 May, 3pm. Association apiary meeting. Everyone welcome - bring your friends!

Sunday 2 June, 3pm. Apiary meeting at Denis Keyte's house.

Friday 18 October, 6.30pm. Annual Honey Show

Denis Keyte has issued an open invitation again this year to join him in his apiary at Wootton Wawen on the first Sunday of each month.

These are informal sessions that may be particularly useful for beginners as Denis has some of the best-behaved bees in the county. Denis tells me that although the sessions are 3pm to 5pm, this is very flexible and you are welcome at any time after lunch. Denis has also reminded me that now is the time to think about taking BBKA examinations - why not go to his meeting and discuss them with him? (PE)

I can recommend silk shirts for beekeeping! They are very cool and comfortable and, being smooth, make it much easier to get into my veil and boiler suit. They also wash very easily and do not need ironing - which makes them popular with Sue! And no, I have not won the lottery - I bought them for £7.50 each (with a free one thrown in if you bought six) on our recent holiday abroad. (PE)

The first outdoor meeting was very pleasant with a good attendance. The weather was fine but very windy (the bees at the apiary I inspected just before the meeting were not pleased to see me!); however, there was hardly a breath of wind in the shelter of the wood. The Association is indeed fortunate to have such a good site, now made even better thanks to the efforts of our apiary manager and his team. A vast amount of space has been cleared around the hives and work is now in hand to get the colonies and equipment into really good shape.

Brian had to dash off after the first colony had been inspected, so decisions for numbers two and three were made by consensus (camels spring to mind!). The second colony was quite strong with a box of foundation over the excluder to produce new drawn comb; we all agreed that this should be below the excluder so that the queen could lay in it.

Colony three was the most interesting as it had no brood - despite Brian's record that five frames of brood had been seen on his last inspection. Doubts were cast on the accuracy of his observation at this point! However, the colony did not behave as though it was queenless, there were no queen cells to be seen and, despite all efforts, no queen could be found. We decided to shut it up, let the bees sort it out and to recommend a follow up inspection a week later. (PE)

Robin Hall has asked me to point out that a squirt of washing up liquid should be added to the washing soda solution used for apiary hygiene.

Just to be clear, the solution is made by adding 1kg of washing soda crystals to 1 gallon of water and adding a squirt of washing up liquid to act as a wetting agent. The solution can be kept in a screw top gallon container. For each apiary visit, a small quantity - perhaps a pint - is poured into a suitable container (30lb plastic honey bucket). A small brush should be kept in the container.

Bees are examined using kitchen (Marigold) gloves with a pair of single use latex gloves over them - you soon get the knack of putting them on! After each colony, gloves and hive tool are washed in the soda solution and the smoker is brushed with the solution where it has been held. If you have a number of colonies, it is a good idea to have a couple of hive tools so that one is soaking while the other is in use. If you use an uncapping fork to check for varroa, then this should also live in the soda bucket. After each apiary, the soda and single use gloves are discarded. (PE)

Last month I updated you on my plans for this season and I have had a very busy month since then putting the plans into action. The fact that everything is so far forward has been helpful in enabling early inspections for disease, but has created a great deal of pressure because equipment was not ready.

The bad news is that I have had two further colonies succumb to EFB at Ailstone farm. However, this was not unexpected as they were next to one that had to be destroyed last September. These two colonies were shook swarmed by our SBI on 25 April. Two 'high risk' colonies at Aston Cantlow (the other four colonies on the site were destroyed last year) were moved to Ailstone, which must be classified as a high-risk site. Other colonies, from apiaries that I classed as low risk have been moved to Billesley, so that the cleared sites could be re-stocked with new colonies.

The good news is that I have now been able to examine every comb in all of my 'old' colonies - our SBI, Richard Lindsey, inspected the colonies at Billesley - and there are no signs of any further EFB. I hope that it is now contained, if not defeated!

My new stocks have been purchased and moved on to the vacant sites to avoid contact with any of the 'old' colonies. Robin and I have inspected half of these colonies (bad weather prevented us from looking at the others) and they are, as expected, in good order.

I am conscious that I have devoted a considerable amount of space to EFB. There are two reasons for this: firstly, I have always believed that information on EFB and AFB should be shared with colleagues so that they are kept fully aware of the location of outbreaks and can take appropriate action (e.g. increased vigilance; avoiding moving bees into a high risk area; being cautious with swarms of unknown origin) and, secondly, to make everyone aware of the amount of work - and heartache - that EFB can cause. I will be happy to publish disease information supplied by any other members, but obviously cannot do so without their permission. (PE)

Last month I promised to tell you how I knew the number of words and pages on our website. I certainly did not count them! The answer lies in the search facility to be found on the front page. This is a wonderful utility provided by a company called 'Atomz'. They provide the necessary coding to generate the search box and also index your entire site - either on demand or at scheduled times which you can decide. I prefer to request a new index each time that I add something to the website so that the search facility is always up to date. It is very quick and easy to do and each time I get a report like this:

I also get weekly reports of the searches that people make - and these can be very useful because they can tell me the sort of things that people think, or hope, that they will find on the site. They can also be amusing; take the following report for example:

There were 23 searches for the week ending 16/03/2002 for
SBKA at http://www.stratford-upon-avon.freeserve.

Here are the top phrases searched:
- 7 for "sheakespeare"
- 5 for "varroa treatment"
- 2 for "foul brood"
- 1 for "foulbrrod"
- 1 for "news letter"

There is an art to searching on the Internet - and some people clearly do not have it! The trick is to try to concentrate on key words and to try alternative spellings where these might be possible. Leaving aside 'sheakespeare', searches for 'varroa' rather than 'varroa treatment', 'foulbrood', and 'newsletter' might have been better. (PE)

Now that summer has arrived (and gone?) perhaps a quick and easy salad dressing might be in order:

Mix equal quantities of honey, dark soy sauce and balsamic vinegar. Intense flavour and wonderful on a bean salad made with red kidney and cannellini beans. (PE)

I was called out to a swarm on St. George's day and had colonies with 18 frames of brood and three supers of honey by the third week in April - but will it last? We will see next month. At the moment we are having some much needed rain.