The Beeholder, January 2009.

A New Year, and with luck all our bees will have survived the winter.
Theoretically the weather over the Xmas/New Year period has been excellent for our bees. Cold, low wind and low rainfall. The bees will be balled up tight and not tempted out in search of non-existent nectar. The ideal situation is a hard dry winter and an early spring where the temperature rises consistently. We don’t want our bees flying when there is nothing to collect. Some beekeepers delight in a warm day in February when the bees dash out seemingly revelling in the sun. OK it is nice to see them after the long winter absence but on such a day the washing also goes out and is ruined by the mass defecation of the bees. Is there any scientific evidence that a mid-winter defecation is good? The bees return having collected nothing and expended valuable winter stores and irritated those in the family whose goodwill is needed for the rest of the year.

Controversies about the best strategy for overwintering bees seem to increase every year. Do we feed over winter and when? Do we treat small hives or Nucs any different from large hives? A few years ago we worried whether to treat for varroa, then it was a worry about which treatment to use. Then whether to treat for Nosema and now it is whether to drip Oxalic acid over bees as a varroa reducer.

Increasing I’m finding sympathy with the “when in doubt do nought” brigade. But I am reminded of The Bee Inspectorate’s stricture “Doing nothing is NOT an option”.
We are advised either to buy just one beekeeping book and stick with it or else buy 6 and choose from them a regime that fits into your life style. Somehow we should distinguish between controversy and confusion. And, in response to members’ requests the MBKA committee is working to have a training programme this year. This will obviously be geared to new beekeepers but will also allow some of us oldies to fill in the blanks of our knowledge. It will be a forum to discuss all the various theories in the text books.

Our attendance at the Welsh Food Fair last year was a matter of chance, we were offered a spare space and thought “why not?” . The success of our attendance at that fair has altered our whole outlook. This year we are being more pro-active (did that word even exist 4 years ago?) . As well as having a training programme , we are attending the Welsh Food Fair again and the Honey/Bee section at the Shrewbury Flower Show and we will also be at some of the village fetes around the county.

We have also been invited to talk to Schools by Powys County Council. MBKA has two observation hives as well as some publicity stands: we should make more use of them. We’ll need a team of volunteers for all this. Come on, Hands Up, don’t be shy.

And finally, remember that as an encouragement to turn up to the AGM on February 19th we have a free raffle of a new bee hive for all those members present. But the AGM meetings have always been fun without the bribe!

Happy New Year , Tony Shaw January 2009