Hiving off CAP supports could help save the bees
Click below to read an article in the Irish Independent
Gold, Silver and Bronze Medal Winners.
South Tipperary had their Honey Show on 30/09/18. There were a total of 407 entries in the show. It was a fantastic event, great organisation and EWBKA were well represented at the show.
Three of our members came away with medals and well done to all who entered.
Winners were :
Gold Medal and first prize winner in the Mead Category..Willy O’Brien.
Silver Medal and second prize for honey in the Novice Category..Anne Marie Fogarty.
Bronze Medal and third prize for honey in the Junior Category..Caoimhin O’Leary
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.
Lecture & Cert Presentation
Presentation of Preliminary Certificates to the 18 exam candidates followed by a talk about Winter Preparation.
Michael Maunsell former Education Officer with FIBKA is our guest speaker.
This will be followed by a little social evening with refreshments and general chat.
This will take place as follows;
Venue – Munster Bar (Upstairs)
Date – Wednesday 19 September
Start Time – 7 P.M. sharp
Date: 19/09/2018
Time: 19:00
Venue:Munster Bar upstairs