The BeeHolder, April 2010

Touring New Zealand it’s nice to occasionally bump into beekeepers, share a few yarns and exchange ideas. Before spending a day with the Christchurch Hobbyist Beekeepers I had already met a number of small holders, (“life stylists” is the Kiwi name) on the North Island who expressed dismay at the poor pollination of their orchards. A drop of 50% in the apple crop in Waiheke island just north of Auckland was related to the collapse of the local bee population. Aucklanders knew that all the evidence is that a local hobbyist was responsible for the introduction of varroa to New Zealand by illegally importing queens. Not surprisingly varroa is worse in the North island but a visit to Christchurch, half way down the east coast of the South Island, revealed a varroa crisis far worse than anything I had seen in Montgomeryshire.

Christchurch Hobbyist Beekeepers meet in their club apiary on the first Saturday of each month. The club has 150 members with most members, as in Montgomeryshire, having up to 10 hives . But they did have more than 20 members who each had more than 25 hives each. These “semi-professional beekeepers were the main source of bee-knowledge to the group.

On the 6th March 60 members and children turned up for a meeting whose theme was varroa and disease. Sam Miller, from Northern Ireland, was the guest speaker and ran through the problems of varroa in Europe emphasising that New Zealanders should learn from European experience of the parasite. He predicted that because of the longer honey season and more active bees varroa resistance would take hold in NZ at a faster rate than it had in Europe. I was startled to be invited to make a few comments and managed to remember some statistics about losses in the UK and about the DNA evidence that most of the viral and Fungal diseases killing off colonies were not new but had been around for at least 35 years and were opportunistic killers taking advantage of the lowered immune system that varroa infestation had caused. (Thank goodness I read my BeeHolders)

Then it was the turn of five of the semi-professional beekeepers who gave a sort of “topical tips”: little tricks for adding formic acid, cleaning hives and opening hives. Sam and I particularly liked a pair of metal handles which President Jeff Robinson uses for introducing boards between brood or supers boxes. See picture below.

Sam Miller from Northern Ireland looks on as president Jeff Robinson demonstrates the Board insertion tool

The distance between the flanges was just a bit more that the width of a clearing board. One is put on one side of the hive and another on the opposite side. The Clearing or Crown board can then just be slipped between and the pair of tools then removed. The boxes need not be lifted from the hive and the whole operation can be done by one person. Sam and I were most impressed, so simple , just why had we not seen something like that before?

I think our MBKA would benefit tremendously by actively recruiting the local professional and semi-professional beekeepers into our association. Like their NZ colleagues our semi-professionals are full of little gimmicks that one can never find in books.

Another “topical-tip” was a way of selecting queens for good hive hygiene behaviour. Take the top of a yogurt pot and press into an area of capped brood on each of your hives. Within the circle of brood prick each cell with a pin. Close the hives and examine again in two days and four days. The hive where the most cells have been cleaned out has the queen with the best “hive hygiene genes”. This is the queen that should be used for stock increase. During the afternoon I met a retired lecturer in zoology (whose father was a beekeeper in Staffordshire) and we mused together whether there was enough time for selection of hygiene behaviour to be of use in combating the ravages of varroa or whether the mapping of the genome of Apis cerana and the transfer of the gene for grooming behaviour from Apis cerana into Apis mellifera might be a far more certain and quicker way of saving the honey bee and western agriculture.

When it was time to open the hives all four were opened together with many members viewing the hives without protection and four young children playing between the hives also without veil or gloves on. How I envied the docility of the Italian bee. All the operations were made so easy. But Sam and I told the members we had never seen such a high degree of varroa infestation in the UK. Varroa mites everywhere. One frame was of recently introduced foundation. There was a patch of drawn comb about 10cells by 10 cells on both sides. On one side the drawn comb contained some brood larvae. Although there was no evidence of varroa on the brood there were varroa mites crawling over the undrawn foundation. However, on turning the frame over one could see the varroa underneath each of the larvae on the opposite side. The quality of light in the UK is rarely such that we can see such things. I remember so many of our MBKA apiary visits where members struggle, even on asunny Welsh day to see what is going on!

White at 7.30 to clump of bees is larvae on opposite side of frame with varroa seen feeding at the bottom of the cells.

A good learning experience for this Welsh and the Irish visitor.

Arthur Finlay

I have cut Arthur’s report on his NZ experiences on the grounds that his photos are self explanatory. Editor.