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USEFUL CONTACTS FUTURE MEETINGS
Chairman : Neil Trood,
BEE LINES
Tel. 01458 241368 SATURDAY 5th DECEMBER
NEWSLETTER OF THE TAUNTON & DISTRICT BEEKEEPERS
Secretary Mary Adams, CHRISTMAS MEAL
87 Greenway, November / December 2009 Number 58 Vol 8
Bishops Lydeard, See enclosed flyer
Taunton TA4 3DA With our bees hopefully wintered with adequate stores, we still
Tel: 01823 432287 SATURDAY 12th DECEMBER have a number of events before the year is out. The Christmas Meal is
E-mail: maryadams715@btinternet.com proving popular and if you wish to come this year’s event then please
OXALIC ACID TREATMENT ensure you complete the information required in the enclosed flyer and
Treasurer : Jenny Gammon, get it to Rosemary by 21st November. Why not book your place for the
500 Cheddon Road, Dan Basterfield to demonstrate. quiz night at the same time?
Taunton. TA2 7QX Included with this issue is the
2.30pm at Heatherton Park
Tel: 01823 270465 Members please bring a clean jar with
final issue of the County Newsletter for
E-mail: sidnjen@vodafoneemail.co.uk a lid if they wish to purchase some the year. As this is also the final
oxalic acid. 'Beelines' for 2009, can I thank you for
Show Secty. VACANT your continued support and trust you
SATURDAY 30th JANUARY will be inundated with honey in the
Social Secretary: VACANT year ahead.
Rosemary Burgess covering post
Tel. 01823 283482 QUIZ NIGHT Seasonal Greetings
Newsletter Editor : One of the most popular events of
. David Morris Editor
David Morris, the year.
‘Cranford’, at The Nags Head COMMITTEE SNIPPETS
Halse,
Thornfalcon The Association’s hives at Heatherton Park yielded 270lbs and 50
Taunton. TA4 3AB pieces of cut comb.
Tel: 01823 432686 7pm for 7.30 pm
The new septic tank is now in place. Adam Robbins is doing his
E-mail: dgmorris@ukonline.co.uk £8.50 for carvery
Numbers to Rosemary
best to tap into various grants.
01823 283482 Our M.P. has added his name to the All Party Parliamentary Group
TAUNTON BEE-KEEPERS on Honey and Bees.
by 17th January please
E Mail FORUM Concern is to be expressed, that with the withdrawal of BBKA
th
Wednesday 10 February from the FERA consultative body, our members no longer have
tauntonbeekeepers.org.uk/joinlist.html representation.
Contact James Fidell 01984 623030 To be arranged We have put forward Chris Harries, David Pearce, and Neil Trood
for Honorary membership of Somerset BKA. All three have given
SBKA website at : 7.30pm at St. Andrews outstanding service to the county for more than 30 years.
www.somersetbeekeepers.org.uk Church Hall The auction date for 2010 is 28th March
Membership has increased to 192 for this year
Christmas Quiz Answers
HIVE WATCH Bookers Wholesale
A few weeks ago we Any of our full members who 1. 1.4
2. 4
completed our wintering of the have a BBKA membership card, 3. Shovelling pollen into the mouth, handling, biting and kneading beeswax, building comb,
bees. Feeders and queen excluders can upon showing it in Brookers, collecting and applying propolis, feeding brood, removing debris (including stuff that beekeepers
have put into the hive like newspaper), grooming and fighting.
were removed, entrances widened, qualify to complete an Advanced / 4. Megan Seymour .
now the wasps danger has passed, Temporary Registration Card. 5. Prof. Francis Ratnieks (Sussex University)
6. Orange (or orangey red)
and a final heft to ensure the hives This will enable the member to 7. Below 10 centigrade and above 27 centigrade. But storing honey above 27 centigrade for
a long time might damage it.
were heavy. purchase sugar for feeding bees. 8. On the tip of the proboscis.
All the syrup had been 9. William Broughton Carr.
10. A good enough answer for me is brood food for the Queen larva. However, you could
taken down weeks ago and such It seems that Bookers will also be have added “The overall composition of royal jelly is 67% water, 12.5% crude protein (including small
stores had been supplemented by quite happy for you to purchase amounts of many different amino acids), and 11% simple sugars, also including a relatively high
amount (5%) of fatty acids.” It all depends on how peculiar you are.
nectar and pollen from the ivy. In anything they have for sale. In 11. Don’t forget the water.
12. Fructose and glucose.
fact, on one hive the space in the this case, you will be issued with 13. The point.
feeder as well as the surrounding a Bookers card. However, you 14. Yes, made from metal, impregnated paper and other man-made materials. They are
arranged to provide tailored stiffness and strength whilst achieving minimum weight.
space had been filled with new must use the card they give you 16. 36 days.
comb and sealed ivy honey. The reasonably frequently otherwise 17. Common Ivy.
18. Yes.
ivy has certainly yielded well and your name comes off the system. 19. 11.
20. Multiplication. Bobby Darin. Early 1960s.
it’s aroma hit you as soon as you You would then have to re- Now there was two butterflies castin’ their eyes
took the lid off. register and again show your fully Both in the same direction
You’d never guess that one little yes
Just as last year, the bees paid up BBKA membership card. Could start a butterfly collection……..
are going into winter strong in It is thus a case of use it or
numbers and stores. We can put our loose it. 2009 Annual General Meeting
feet up until the oxalic treatment Gerald Fisher and Ken Tredgett, the county President and Chairman
time in December and later tidying respectively, were amongst the members attending the AGM on Saturday 7 th
up the apiaries during a frosty spell BEGINNERS COURSE 2010 November who would have come away with some of the ideas developed by
in the new year. Ed the speaker, Ken Basterfield from Devon. A commercial beekeeper, and one
This year’s Beginners Course will be of the senior lecturers in the country, Ken described how he tries to make the
held at St. Andrews Hall on the task of beekeeping easier especially in respect of lifting some of the 90lb
following dates starting at 7.30 pm (when full), deep supers that he uses. A modified sack truck illustrated how
much easier it was to load heavy weights onto a trailer via his adapted ramp.
24th Feb. He then went on to show how washing machines, washing up bowls,
3rd March
old milk churns and a boiler helped in the extraction of honey and wax. After
10th March
24th March questions, a vote of thanks was given by David Morris who suggested that
31st March members get down to their local recycling depots a.s.a.p.
After an excellent tea provided by Jenny Gammon and helpers, the
And on 10th April at Heatherton Park business meeting was opened by Simon Jones, the President. During his
starting at 2.30 pm deliberations he particularly thanked the officers and the committee for their
With 107 names already signed up immense contribution to the Division throughout the year. Mary Adams,
for the course we have to reluctantly secretary, and Jenny Gammon, treasurer, both recorded their thanks for the
accept no further names for this support and help they had received and were duly re-elected. Vacancies still
year. exist for a show secretary and social secretary. Ed.
Propolis sterilises hives And it may partly explain why bees and other social insects, such as ants, collect
Yes yes: intuitively we knew it must do, but the actual scientific proof was a bit thin. The well
resins to build their nests in the first place.
known antimicrobial properties of propolis give the whole colony a form of "social immunity",
"Honeybees can use wax, which they produce themselves, to do all the things that
which lessens the need for each individual bee to have a strong immune system. Although
they use resin for in the nest. So it is interesting to think about why they might go and
honeybee resin is known to kill a range of pathogens, it is only recently that bees themselves
collect resins," said Simone.
have been shown to utilise its properties.
"Especially since resins, being sticky, are hard to manipulate and take a lot of energy
A team from the University of Minnesota in St Paul, US, has published details of their
for individual bees to gather in very small quantities." There is also some evidence
discovery in the journal Evolution. Honeybees in the wild nest in tree cavities. When founding
that some mammals and birds coat themselves in naturally-occurring plant resin in a
a new colony, they line the entire nest interior with a thin layer of resins that they mix with
bid to reduce infestations with parasites.
wax. This is the mixture we know as propolis. They also use propolis to smooth surfaces in
the hive, close holes or cracks in the nest, reduce the size of the entrances to keep out Story adapted from BBC NEWS: Published: 2009/07/23
Thanks to Montgomeryshire BKA for this story via E Bees
intruders, and to embalm intruders that they've killed in the hive
that are too big to remove.
A number of studies have shown that propolis has a range of antimicrobial properties, but FOUL BROOD INSPECTIONS
mostly in relation to human health. For example, numerous publications cite its effectiveness An interim report at the September Council meeting indicated
against viruses, bacteria and even cancer cells in humans. But Mike Simone, a PhD student that 6 cases of AFB and 10 cases of EFB had been confirmed. In our
and his supervisor Professor Marla Spivak at the University of Minnesota became interested Division, instances were reported from Stoke St Gregory, Flaxpool
in the effectiveness of honeybee propolis against bee pathogens, such as American and Uffculm areas.
foulbrood. "This led us to wonder what other things propolis might be doing for the bees," said It was further reported that to date, 1489 colonies had been
inspected at 300 different apiaries. This figure is set to increase as the
Simone.
inspections continued until 31st October. The increase from one to
In experiments funded by the US National Science Foundation, Simone's team painted the
three inspectors covering Somerset has made a dramatic difference.
inside walls of hives with an extract of propolis collected from Brazil or Minnesota. This inside You may recall that in Somerset’s submission to the DEFRA
layer mimicked how propolis or resins would be distributed in a feral colony nesting in a tree consultative paper last year we stressed,’ there is an urgent need for
cavity. They then created colonies of honeybees and housed either in hives enriched with the N.B.U. to have the resources to appoint additional inspectors in
resin, or hives without the resin layer - to act as a control. After one week of exposure they the field.’ It appears our views were noted. Ed
collected bees that had been born in each colony. Genetic tests on these 7-day-old bees
showed that those growing in the resin-rich colonies had less active immune systems.
‘Foundation is an expensive item and can cost around £5
"The resins likely inhibited bacterial growth. Therefore the bees did not have to activate their
per lb’
immune systems as much," said Simone. "Our finding that propolis in the nest allows bees to This is a quote from a piece written by Ken Edwards in the 1980 Somerset
invest less in their immune systems after such a short exposure was surprising. Resins in the BKA Year Book. For your £5 you would have got eight sheets of wired
hive have been thought of as a potential benefit to a deep foundation – at a cost of 62p a sheet. Today you can get 10 equivalent
sheets for £7-31 at a cost of 73p a sheet. If you have wax to trade in it will
honey bee colony, but this has never been tested directly."
be even cheaper.
Using resins to help sterilise the colony can be thought of as a type of "social immunity" said Perhaps beekeeping is no longer a rich mans hobby!
the researchers.
researchers. And it may partly explain why bees and other social insects, such as ants,
Year in Retrospect
CHRISTMAS QUIZ
Our annual review of the year attracted many more members than in recent Devised by Roy White for the Somerton Newsletter Dec. 2008
years. There was a common experience express by all the participants in
that they had all had a reasonable crop of honey this year, something that 1 . Approximately, what is the Specific Gravity of floral honey?
had not been the case in the last two seasons. 2. How many wings has a drone honeybee?
Their season started with very few winter losses and the colonies built up
3. What are mandibles used for?
well in the ideal conditions in the early spring. However this had its
consequences in many cases. Swarms were a common feature despite the 4. Which Somerset beekeeper won the Wax Chandlers prize in 2007 for being the best
BBKA Master Beekeeper?
beekeepers efforts. It was generally felt that this could be nature’s way of
redressing the many losses that had occurred in recent years and many 5. Name the only UK Professor of Apiculture.
present said they had been able to increased their colony numbers back to 6. What is the colour of Asparagus pollen?
what they were two years ago. Alas, the poor weather in July will have
7. Generally, what are the temperatures at which honey will not ferment?
resulted in many of these swarms failing to build up sufficiently to survive.
More members than usual said their hives had been subjected to attacks 8. Where is the flabellum of the honeybee?
from woodpeckers. This was possibly due to the long cold snaps that we 9. What was the name of the man who invented the WBC hive?
had in December and again in the new year. Wasps were also mentioned
10. What is Royal Jelly?
and some members had been inundated with them whilst others indicated
the opposite. 11. Could honeybees survive on nothing but honey and pollen?
Amongst those present were a number who had participated in the rent-a- 12. What simple sugars do the honeybees create when turning nectar into honey?
hive scheme. They told the meeting that they had enjoyed the experience
13. In a honeybee honeycomb, is the point of the hexagon or the flat of the hexagon on
and were very sincere in their thanks to the mentors. Having taken their the top?
hives home the previous weekend, they informed us that they were
14. Do aeroplanes use honeycombs?
watching them every day, something we all did with our first colony.
An interesting meeting concluded with the Chairman, Neil Trood thanking 15. For a worker honeybee, how many days from laying the egg to cell sealed?
Milns Priscott for once again leading and Chairing the session. 16. What is the average length of life of a worker in summer?
17 . What is the common name of Hedera helix?
18. Can bees fly backwards in still air?
19. How many frames fully populate a Modified Commercial Hive?
20. And for the older beekeeper who can never find his hive tool, can’t see eggs and dare
not kneel down for fear of being unable to get up again, from what song are the following
words taken, who sung the definitive version and approximately, when?
“When you see, a gentleman bee, around a lady bee buzzin’
Just count to ten then count again,
There’s sure to be an even dozen….”
