The Basingstoke Beekeeper

Winter 2007

Contents

Chairman's Notes

I must apologise yet again for missing meetings and committees but I have been milking the cows in Cornwall. The wet summer has affected all of our bees with hardly any honey anywhere. Those of us who took bees to Exmoor saw a good looking crop of heather, the bees filled their brood boxes but that was about all. Let's hope for better times next year.

Gordon has had a change in priorities and now is able to spare less time to do Club work and anyway would like to do less, after all the years he has been actively involved. Both Gordon and Sue have done a great deal for the Club, i.e., newsletter, shop, teaching courses, chairman, secretary, other committee posts, apiary manager, running stands at shows and making the tea at meetings. We would all like to thank them very much for all their hard work. We will not be losing them as members, but need to cover the vacant posts.

We urgently need a member to take on the shop -- it requires a diy store approximately 6' x 8' I think a shed this size would be a very comfortable size and shape, though a smaller space is feasible with a little care stacking stuff. Gordon. This service yields the Club around \pounds 400 to \pounds 500 a year and without this income, subscriptions may have to rise by about \pounds 10/member.

Anyone else who would be prepared to have a go at any of the jobs associated with running the club, please come forward and have a go.

Eric

Swarm Collections 2007

It is interesting to compare the data for this year with previous years. All figures are for calls directed through Basingstoke & Deane Council, and do not include informal approaches by people who know their local beekeeper.

In 2006 the number of swarms was very low. This year we were very busy. A feature this summer was a large number of swarms disappearing into cavities in buildings and having to be destroyed by pest controllers. I do not have a figure for these, but if the bees had chosen somewhere more sensible from our point of view, membersā€™ hives would all be full. Wasps seemed to be normal. Bumblebees are down again, though we had more success in persuading people to leave them alone this year.

Neil Vigers

Out And About

by David Purchase

The annual reflection on the year's events by the media irritates me. It seems to be a thinly disguised excuse for lazy journalism.

Well, now it's my turn, so here I go!

My ear is not as close to the ground as it was during my years as a Bee Inspector. Nevertheless, I am still sufficiently in touch to be able to get a good feel of things. My overall impression of 2007 is of a below average year for the majority of beekeepers, (including me).

April was a promising month. Warm and dry with plenty of forage in most areas. Alas, the oilseed rape failed to deliver in some areas. Many of us on the chalk within foraging distance of rape were disappointed by the poor yields. There is evidence that in some areas this was attributable to less attractive varieties of the plant, from the bees' perspective. I believe that low nectar yields had as least as much to do with very dry soil conditions.

Then, of course, came the rain (it is a pity that some of it didn't fall in April!). Cool, wet days restricted foraging, and resulted in some beekeepers having to feed their bees; something practically unheard of in recent years. Tales of the traditional 'June Gap' were resurrected. Nevertheless, there is always a silver lining. Those who had bees within flying distance of borage reported good yields from this increasingly grown crop (used mainly by the pharmaceutical industry).

The summer rain did auger well for the heather. Many beekeepers reported very good crops following the reasonable foraging weather in August and early September.

Colonies did well, too, on the ivy during late summer and autumn. Dismissed by many beekeepers as a nuisance, ivy is providing a late crop for a growing number of beekeepers. Its allegedly unpleasant taste apparently mellows with keeping and it is now being sold as an increasingly popular mono-floral honey. At the very least, it is a very useful crop for blending with others.

If left for the bees, ivy can make a valuable contribution to winter stores, often obviating the need for autumn feeding. It does set hard, but bees can use it provided they are able to collect water on mild days or make use of any condensation within the hive. A word of warning however. Some of my colonies collected so much nectar and pollen from the ivy that vital brood rearing space was used for storage, leaving the queen with insufficient laying space, despite my Langstroth Jumbo brood boxes. The answer is to add an empty super early on or replace some food frames with empty drawn comb (keeping the full frames in reserve). Brood frames full of food removed in this way should only be given to other colonies in need of food if the donor colony is known to be healthy, otherwise disease can be spread very easily.

The Introduction to Beekeeping course has necessarily been modified for 2008 (though Chris, Gordon and I hope to be able to return to the established format in 2009). For a fee of \pounds 15, there will be four, one hour theory classes immediately preceding the Association's monthly Thursday evening meetings from January until April, and practical tuition will be held in conjunction with the monthly apiary meetings in St. John's Copse.

This is, sadly, the last edition of Basingstoke Beekeeper to be edited by Gordon. Also, as you know, he is retiring from his post as Apiary Manager and relinquishing responsibility for the bulk buy scheme. I am very grateful to him, as I know many of you are, for the wide range of tasks he has undertaken for the Association over the past twenty years. He has done just about everything since gamely accepting the Chairmanship soon after he joined the Association! Sue, too, has provided invaluable support over the same period. I wish them both a well earned rest from their labours. The good news is that they will continue as members and Gordon will continue as a tutor on the beginners' course.

Very best wishes for Christmas and the New Year.

David Purchase

Why The Change?

by Gordon Scott

I can't remember now exactly when I started beekeeping. Something close to 20 years ago now, after a spring with no bees so no pollination so no fruit in the garden. At the time I presumed that the local beekeeper, whoever that was, had moved away or given up beekeeping. In fact the chap in question had just moved his Nuc out of the garden for a while. Norman still keeps plenty of bees.

I was lucky that there was a beekeeping theory course running that winter at one of the local schools and run by John Cossburn, who was then the County Bee Lecturer at Sparsholt College. Sadly that department was closed many years ago now and John, who was made redundant, expanded his previously modest commercial beekeeping into a proper "day job" business.

I started in the Association as I seemed to carry on. I turned up at the AGM to observe and to join the Association at the end for the forthcoming year. Well, somehow I managed to get myself elected as Chairman, which was probably not really constitutional as I wasn't yet quite a member, but at least I'd joined half an hour or so later.

I'm quite pleased to say that we managed to build the Association quite well with assorted publicity drives and lots of touting the stands around to shows. I've always believed both these things to be important and particularly the stand, especially when there's an observation hive and a chance to whet the public appetite.

I think I finally slipped quietly from the Committee something like 14 years after I first joined it.

But I've also, of course, had other interests. Sue and I are both keen theatre goers and indeed we first met during our times in a very active Amateur company in London where I did mostly sound engineering for a large proportion of the prodigious output of around 30 productions each year in two theatres plus the odd tour. We're now no longer actively participate in any productions, except occasionally as sounding board for friends, but still go to many local shows, usually at Central Studio in Queen Mary's College.

For some 14 years I also did Kendo, the Japanese style of sword-fencing, almost making Fourth Dan before an injury ended my involvement.

My other passion, though, (apart from Sue), is sailing. I've sailed on and off since I was around 10 of 11. In the past this has mostly been dinghy sailing and the occasional charter, but my focus has changed. A few years ago, we bought a large-ish day sailing boat which we keep on the Solent. That's been good but we found the day sailing limiting and Sue, understandably, doesn't `do' camping. I've managed reasonably to combine day sailing with beekeeping, though it's occasionally been a struggle to keep things in order.

This summer I finally paid off the mortgage and, with much eased cash flow poor investments left a startling short-fall to accommodate, we looked for a larger boat with a real cabin and at least a hint at comfort. A few months back we finally bought a 1930 built sailing yawl by the late 19th/early 20th century artist and designer, Albert Strange. We now want more time at weekends and other times to sail her. Rather than on the Solent, she's also on the River Blackwater in Essex, so day sailing is not now so sensible an option.

I'd been trying through this year to do my beekeeping in the evenings to keep more weekend time free, but my day job usually has quite long days and I simply couldn't get everything done.

Someone said to me a year or so back that a person has the ability at any one time to do two and a half activities, one of which is usually their job. It became time for me to decide which other activity I presently wanted to be the other whole activity. This time round I chose Galatea and sailing.

As Eric says in his Notes, Sue and I will still be around and we'll still be doing things bee-related. I plan to continue for the immediate future, at least, with the Beekeeping For Beginners theory course, though I plan not to do the practical course this year. With Egret, the day sailer, beekeeping one day and sailing the other was supposed to be practical, though with this year's weather that proved unconvincing. Ho Hum.

If anyone is interested, Egret is for sale. She's a modern gunter yawl version of Paul Fisher's Highlander 18 design built superbly in ply/epoxy. There's more detail about her here... http://www.gscott.co.uk/Egret.html. By the time you read this, there should also be a little information and a photo or two of the new-to-us septuagenarian, too. http://www.gscott.co.uk/Galatea.html.

And finally.. Thank You!.. to all the people who have helped and supported both the Association and me over all those years.

Recipe

Cranberry \ White Chocolate Cookies

Diary

Unless otherwise stated, evening meetings are at 7:30pm in our Study Centre, The Walled Garden, Down Grange, Basingstoke and apiary meetings are 2:30pm at St. John's Copse, Oakley.

Thursday 20th Dec

Xmas social and hand-bells

Thursday 17th Jan

Annual General Meeting in The Bothy as usual. I'm not aware of any proposed constitutional changes, though subscriptions changes may be warranted. Details will be circulated later. Please inform secretary of any matters arising to be included

Thursday 21st Feb

John Furzey on Queen Rearing.

Thursday 20th Mar

Bill Dartnall

Thursday 17th Apr

Peter Kennedy, Seasonal Bee Inspector.