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

Again a small turnout on an overcast day. David led the inspection of the hives, Keith, Ann and Kevin completing the team. Some hives were found to be light on stores, these were given combs with stores from a colony that was on a double brood box. This colony was therefore returned to a single brood box after its spare frames had been shared round.

All hives were seen to have brood and considered queenright.

Six part filled boxes of honey were removed for extraction as the heavens opened. A stack of empty supers was removed to the shed for winter storage after which four bedraggled beekeepers went home.
Kevin Roles

At our meeting on 24 September I will be using the excellent projection facilities at the Stratford College lecture theatre to give an illustrated talk on our exploits in Kerala last January. We were fortunate to be able to meet local beekeepers and work with Apis mellifera, Apis cerana and the stingless bee, Trigona iridipennis. This was just part of a fascinating holiday and we returned home with around 450 photographs.

For non-beekeeping spouses I will cover some of the rest of the holiday - but promise not to show all 450 photographs!
Peter Edwards

Even more products are now available to help in the fight against varroa.

Follicel is a food-grade insecticidal 'soap' used for head lice. Rather more sophisticated is 'Exomite Apis', which is really a new method of delivery, rather than a new anti-varroa chemical. It claims to deliver thymol more accurately by using static charges to attach the powder to incoming (and outgoing?) bees and they then carry the powder to the brood cells. It is claimed that the quantity of thymol can be reduced because of the accurate delivery. However, this technology does not come cheap. When I emailed for a price I was quoted as follows:

This must make 'Exomite Apis' one of the most expensive treatments available! Even at the five-pack rate, the two packs required for each hive (spring and autumn) would cost £13.17 with postage. Personally, I will be continuing to use thymol crystals - the equivalent cost for the two treatments per hive is just 47p; this year I did not treat in the Spring as I could not find any mites, so the cost will be for one treatment per hive - 23.5p.

Incidentally, I have just read a paper published in the American Bee Journal that reviewed three thymol-based products - Apiguard, Apilife VAR and Thymovar. In their tests Apilife VAR was the most effective.
Peter Edwards

I have found an interesting website run by the Natural History Museum. It is called 'The Postcode Plants Database' and can be found at http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/life/plants-fungi/postcode-plants/.

You simply input the first part of your postcode to obtain a complete listing of all the plants recorded in your area. Many of the listings then have links to photographs of the plant. A remarkable and valuable resource.
Peter Edwards

During our recent safari we discussed the source of a deep orange/red pollen. This is common across the district, but was particularly noticeable in Mike's apiary at Charlecote. I have now had a chance to look at samples under the microscope and find that it comes from wild mignonette (Reseda lutea). Howes, in 'Plants and Beekeeping', gives this as a good source of pollen and nectar. Note that the pollen is an orange/red, rather than the brick red of horsechestnut or the crimson of the red deadnettle, both of which flower much earlier.

Whilst searching the Internet for pictures of mignonette, I found two more websites of interest. The first is 'Bioimages - Field Guide (UK)' which can be found at http://www.bioimages.org.uk/. The database contains 30,000 images of 3,000 species and is largely the work of one man, Malcolm Storey.

The second site is the Bioimage Database, which is 'part of the European Commission-funded ORIEL Project (Online Research Information Environment for the Life Sciences), which, as the research arm of E-BioSci, is developing tools and procedures to promote access to and integration and retrieval of high-quality digital biological information. Within this, the BioImage Database will provide the scientific community with a freely-accessible database of multidimensional digital images of biological research relevance with deep descriptive metadata, using the latest Semantic Web technology'. At present this database is being rebuilt, but I have registered to be notified when it goes live again.

I will put links to all these sites on our Links page when I have a few moments!
Peter Edwards

The EU banned the import of animal products, including honey, from China in early 2002 after samples were found to contain the illegal antibiotic chloramphenicol.

Now it seems that the Chinese have cleaned up their act (and the contaminated honey?) and Chinese honey will, once again, be on sale in the UK. However, I see from an American Bee Journal report that the American National Honey Board has been testing imported honey for adulteration with 'Altered Sweetener Product'. A statement issued on 15 March 2004 reports that out of 69 samples tested in the first month, 9 were suspected of being adulterated with the altered sweetener product and 7 of these samples were from - yes, you guessed it - China. I wonder if imports into the UK are being tested...

Whether any of this will impact on our own sales remains to be seen, but I do hope that those customers who tried English honey for the first time when the Chinese product was banned liked it enough to keep coming back for more.
Peter Edwards

The National Honey Show will be held at the RAF Museum, Hendon. Schedules and entry forms (to be returned by 23rd September) available from Mike Osborne. Arrangements can be made for the delivery and return of exhibits. If you have never been to the National it is well worth a visit, even if you are not exhibiting, and this year offers a good opportunity. There is free parking available away from the problems of Central London, with access to the RAF Museum's exhibits. Cost for day visitors is now only £5.

[Note that the date of the show has moved from November to October, PE].
Mike Osborne

At the end of May we left the swarm settling into their new home in rural North Oxfordshire; one small problem, they were in the wrong location! So there I was faced with the old 3 feet or 3 miles problem. Fortunately when transferring the bees to the new home I had thought ahead and placed the hive on the end of a 2' 6" x 6' 6" piece of board. I had also placed the hive with the entrance facing away from the direction in which it was to be moved. I have found that if you move a hive backwards in line with entrance, the bees will tend to fly the extra few feet to the hive. Using this technique you can easily move a hive 5/6 feet at a time. So on a daily basis, weather and other commitments permitting, I would walk round behind the hive, slide my fingers under the end sides of the board and gently pull the board in the required direction. Out would fly a small cloud of bees looking for a marauding brown bear and I would casually walk back down the garden. After about 2 weeks the hive was some 3 feet from the required location. Optimistically gathering together two drawn supers and a queen excluder, I veiled up. A puff of smoke at the entrance and off came the roof. The brood chamber was placed on the roof and the floor moved to the final location. The brood chamber was placed on the floor and after a couple puffs of smoke, cover removed. Bees still quiet. Canvas cover rolled over the combs and the combs examined. Five solid combs of brood. Plenty of stores and three new combs drawn. AOK. Still all quiet! Canvas cover off - queen excluder on - two supers on - cover on - job done. Des. Res. in Des. Location.
Geoffrey Bywaters