Education
Winter Preparation ..Michael Maunsell 19/09/18
Michael gave us a very engaging and entertaining talk about preparing our bees for the winter. He used lots of analogies to illustrate his talk.
He said honey should be off by now, disease treatments administered and bees left with sufficient stores to take them through the winter and that by now bees should be settled down for the winter.
He recommends overwintering on a double box either a brood and a half or double brood box to ensure the bees have space to access food. He recommends overwintering a few nucs also.
The principal winter problems;
Queenlessness or problems with the queen..you can tell if you have a good queen by the brood pattern. There should be twice the number of grubs to eggs, Brood in all stages and good brood pattern. If queen is suspect requeen. Colonies overwinter better with a young queen
Disease..inspect for AFB, EFB, Chalkbrood, Nosema and Acarine. Testing is free. Send to Mary Coffey. Look for sealed cells out of sequence, larvae with C shape distortion and cell perforation. If colonies are small..why?
Varroa..dont treat automatically. Check how bad your varroa problem is. He recommends the sugar shaker method as being the easiest and is very reliable. See the following link for details http://nihbs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Sugar-shaker-method.pdf. He talked us through the various treatment options and the use of Apibioxyl. He advised keeping a record of all medicines used. A link for a medicines card is in our Links page.
Notes from FIBKA Spring Tour Lecture with Dr Kirsten Traynor 24/03/18
Background
Dr.Kirsten Traynor of Flickerwood Apiary. Maryland, U.S.A. was invited by FIBKA to speak to beekeepers in Ireland. Dr. Traynor has a doctorate in Bee Biology and is the editor of the American Bee Journal. She has studied differences between European and American beekeeping and has published a number of books and has done many other studies. She was invited to speak in each of the provinces and had different lectures in each one. The Munster Lecture was held in The Horse and Jockey Hotel. Thurles on Saturday 24/03/18. This was a great venue, even though parking was at a premium. The lecture was held in a theatre hall which made it easy to see her and her presentation. There were approximately 80 people there, some of whom were travelling to hear all her lectures. The topics for the afternoon were ‘Halting the Unstoppable Swarm’ and ‘American Foul Brood’
Dr. Traynor was introduced by Gerry Ryan, President FIBKA. She told us she manages 40 hives organically and sells 150 Nucs and 200 Queens annually.