Dear Beekeeper
Summer may be here at last, the bees are working hard to collect nectar & you may be looking forward to a honey crop at the beginning of next month. Book the DDBKA extractors with Brian Marlow, 01304 831505. We have a 9 frame and 2 x 4 frame manual extractors for members to borrow. When the honey has been extracted, put the super boxes back for the bees to lick dry & take any surplus down to the brood. We also have 2 solar wax extractors as well. Take advantage of the sun, the heat generated by solar extractors will kill wax moth larvae & other nasties.
After extraction, if you are lucky enough to have honey, it will be time for varroa treatment, usually administered in mid August. We shall have Apiguard for sale at the July meeting. 2 trays needed per colony.
Wasps are starting to hang around hives & can be merciless attacking weak colonies or nucs. Reduce entrances if you see wasps pestering hives & make wasp traps in jam jars to drown them.
Do NOT use honey as the bait, jam or sweet drinks will work.
Please let me know if you are still looking for swarms or a nuc.
Jean Mozley says she has mated queens for sale if you need new blood for your colonies.07952 739795
Exam Results
The 4 candidates taking the Basic Assessment, Carol Britnell, Eric Cattell, Claire Inglin & Rob Philpott, all passed, Rob with a credit. Well done to them & thanks to Mary who has 100% pass rate for her teaching. If you have kept bees for a couple of years & have not had a go yet, it is recognition of competence in beekeeping.
Classes begin next spring!
APIARY NEWS
From next year the Eythorne out apiary will need to be managed differently.
It is a club asset & needs careful looking after. We are lucky to have it.
We now have 117 Registered members, so everyone should try to lend a hand, to help with perhaps only a small part of the tasks, but to be able to share & feedback what needs to be done & to ensure that small jobs are covered to make the whole run smoothly.
For example, these are some of the varied areas for which responsibility could be needed:
The grounds, hive maintenance, frame making & cleaning, the colonies, bee health & treatments, honey extraction & jarring, catering, equipment maintenance, shed tidying, loans, apiary access via gates, being a mentor, record keeping, swarm collecting [as a public as well as a personal service], representing DDBKA on stalls etc.
None of these jobs are onerous on their own, could be done working with a partner.
In addition we shall need a coordinator, or perhaps a partnership, not necessarily on site every week, but with an overview & in charge of forward planning. Give it some thought please!
David Stevenson read this item on BBC News pages – see what beekeeping can do to improve the world!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36702997
Best wishes
Maggie
Summer may be here at last, the bees are working hard to collect nectar & you may be looking forward to a honey crop at the beginning of next month. Book the DDBKA extractors with Brian Marlow, 01304 831505. We have a 9 frame and 2 x 4 frame manual extractors for members to borrow. When the honey has been extracted, put the super boxes back for the bees to lick dry & take any surplus down to the brood. We also have 2 solar wax extractors as well. Take advantage of the sun, the heat generated by solar extractors will kill wax moth larvae & other nasties.
After extraction, if you are lucky enough to have honey, it will be time for varroa treatment, usually administered in mid August. We shall have Apiguard for sale at the July meeting. 2 trays needed per colony.
Wasps are starting to hang around hives & can be merciless attacking weak colonies or nucs. Reduce entrances if you see wasps pestering hives & make wasp traps in jam jars to drown them.
Do NOT use honey as the bait, jam or sweet drinks will work.
Please let me know if you are still looking for swarms or a nuc.
Jean Mozley says she has mated queens for sale if you need new blood for your colonies.07952 739795
Exam Results
The 4 candidates taking the Basic Assessment, Carol Britnell, Eric Cattell, Claire Inglin & Rob Philpott, all passed, Rob with a credit. Well done to them & thanks to Mary who has 100% pass rate for her teaching. If you have kept bees for a couple of years & have not had a go yet, it is recognition of competence in beekeeping.
Classes begin next spring!
APIARY NEWS
From next year the Eythorne out apiary will need to be managed differently.
It is a club asset & needs careful looking after. We are lucky to have it.
We now have 117 Registered members, so everyone should try to lend a hand, to help with perhaps only a small part of the tasks, but to be able to share & feedback what needs to be done & to ensure that small jobs are covered to make the whole run smoothly.
For example, these are some of the varied areas for which responsibility could be needed:
The grounds, hive maintenance, frame making & cleaning, the colonies, bee health & treatments, honey extraction & jarring, catering, equipment maintenance, shed tidying, loans, apiary access via gates, being a mentor, record keeping, swarm collecting [as a public as well as a personal service], representing DDBKA on stalls etc.
None of these jobs are onerous on their own, could be done working with a partner.
In addition we shall need a coordinator, or perhaps a partnership, not necessarily on site every week, but with an overview & in charge of forward planning. Give it some thought please!
David Stevenson read this item on BBC News pages – see what beekeeping can do to improve the world!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36702997
Best wishes
Maggie
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