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Herefordshire Buzzword Herefordshire Beekeepers Association
March 2020
Registered Charity No:1174917
www.herefordshirebeekeepers.org.uk 1 of 13 March 2020
Forthcoming Events
❖ 12th March First Inspection, preparation. Stoke Lacy Village Hall, HR7 4HG. 19:30
❖ 14th March Beetradex. Hall H2, Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire, CV8 2LG. 09:00 – 16:30.
❖ 19th March AGM. Three Counties Hotel, HR2 7BP. 19:00. Speaker Marin Anastasov NDB
❖ 21st March Beginners’ theory. RVS Centre, 26 Vicarage Road, Hereford, HR1 2QN
❖ 22nd March Honey Bee Health Course. Stoneleigh, CV8 2LG. See BBKA website
❖ 28th March Beginners’ theory 2. RVS Centre, 26 Vicarage Road, Hereford, HR1 2QN
❖ 28th March Welsh Beekeeping convention. Builth Wells Old Food Hall, Royal Welsh
Agricultural Showground, Powys, LD2 3SY.
❖ 3rd -5th April BBKA Spring convention. Harper Adams, TF10 8NB. See BBKA website
❖ 7th & 14th April Weekly inspection of hives. Holme Lacy, 18:00.
❖ 18th April Hive Opening, Bob & Kath Cross, Stone House, Cradley, 14:30 -17:30.
❖ 21st April Hoopers/Asian Hornet Traps, Holme Lacy, 18:00
Advanced notice - book early:
❖ 27th June Healthy Bee Day – Sutton St Nicholas village hall. See HBKA website for details
www.herefordshirebeekeepers.org.uk 2 of 13 March 2020
East Lan meeting 11th February
Our opening meeting this year was on the 11th February at Stoke Lacy Village Hall entitled ‘How
to put frames/hives together’. We had covered the topic a couple of years ago but felt there
should be sufficient beginners to warrant covering it
again.
The 11th was a very wet and windy night in fact it was
snowing when we got to the hall but quite a few brave
souls turned out. Dave Sutton and Bob Cross first
explained the different types of hives and frames
together with some of the pitfalls encountered when
building. Then those who wanted to, were able to have
a go.
Even the non-beginners seemed to enjoy the session
with us all learning something (I did not know there
was right and wrong way to put the foundation in- did
you ?) After quite a lot of hammering of nails, we
adjourned for tea, cakes, and a catch up.
Sue Garrett
Evening meeting- 27th February - ‘Spring Management’
Despite the wind, rain and flooding, a goodly number of people turned up to hear Anne
Rowberry, current Chairman of the BBKA, give her talk on ‘Spring Management’. Key take-aways
included:
If needed, feed pollen or pollen substitute. This is needed not only for brood but also for
workers to develop their hypopharyngeal glands. Make sure there is water available. March is
the most dangerous month for potential starvation. Check for food and add fondant, directly on
top of the frames if needed. Stressed colonies, (eg if they have not had enough early food) will be
weaker and more prone to disease later in the season, as well as produce less honey.
If there is a warm, still day in March use the opportunity for a quick first inspection, check for
stores and for evidence that the queen is present, for instance look for brood
Later in the spring; check for space to expand, check for diseases and treat as necessary. Check
for drone cells – an early indication that swarming may be on the way. Swarming can start as
early as late March.
All timings are weather dependent. Update all your records of the colonies as you go along. You
will need to refer back to those records later in the season.
Roger Gill
www.herefordshirebeekeepers.org.uk 3 of 13 March 2020
Images from the Alfred Watkins Collection
This image from the archive of images
by Alfred Watkins (1855-1935) is
entitled “A talk from the bee van”. The
speaker appears to be demonstrating
a model of centrifugal honey extractor
to his audience.
Topical tip
I anticipate the bees getting moving early this year as we have had such a mild winter. It is a
good idea to look through your equipment and repair or dispose of old boxes and frames. New
frames can be made up in anticipation, but I usually wait until I need them to add wax, as the
bees will not work stale foundation.
It is also a good idea to look through last year’s records, and make up new record cards so they
are ready to go once it is time for the first inspection.
If you intend to collect swarms this year, familiarise yourself with our swarm collection page on
the website, and be ready with a plan of what to ask and what to take with you. I would not
attempt a cut out, or bees down a chimney, and I usually refer people to a pest control company.
Mary Walter
www.herefordshirebeekeepers.org.uk 4 of 13 March 2020
E. H. Taylor Catalogue – 1933
January-February you should feed candy NOT syrup. As per calendar March is the danger
month,
Not much has changed in the last 90 years.
Take a look at a few do's and don'ts.
No mention of varroa mites or Asian hornets.
Bob Cross
www.herefordshirebeekeepers.org.uk 5 of 13 March 2020
Asian Hornet Conference
On Saturday, February 8th the BBKA hosted a very interesting and well attended conference for
local association Asian Hornet Action Teams (AHATs). HBKA was represented by Andy Spanjers,
Rob Williams and Mary Walter. Each offers a report on one aspect of the conference
Life History and Current Research.
There are 23 known species of Vespa (Hornets) in the world. In a temperate climate such as that
of Britain, the Asian Hornet (AH) would generally awake from hibernation in March/April and
begin to build their primary nests. This initial construction takes around a month at which point
the queen will have 25-30 cells to lay eggs in and nurture.
When there are around 50 workers present, the colony will often split up. A community of
workers will go off and build a second nest at which point the queen will stay in the primary
nest. Once the second nest is large enough the queen will move here and continue to lay and
expand the colony.
Research from Jersey indicates however, that around 30% or primary nests transition into
secondary nests. So, if a primary nest is built in a small void or is deemed to be in an unsafe area
by the queen a secondary will be built. This is why it is important to check the contents of a
destroyed nest so as to check if the queen was laying/and was present during the treatment.
Over their lifetime a queen produces more males and gynes (fertile females) than workers!
During a year with favourable weather conditions and plentiful food available, a colony can
produce up to 750 fertile males and 1000 gynes.
Hornets are most noticeable between July-September due to numbers and foraging activity
(Another similarity between AH and wasps).
Queens and workers are very similar in size so it is incredibly difficult to distinguish the
difference between them. To detect the difference a scientific examination is often required
when the abdomen is opened up and ‘fatty bodies’ contained within will clarify if the specimen
is a queen.
After hatching, a new queen will generally leave the nest after 10-14 days.
The AH is known to be very aggressive in Asia. Early indications are that it is generally less so in
Europe, although as the venom is different to that of the European Hornet and of honey bees,
one of the SBI’s suffered some very nasty reactions to some stings in 2019.
Asian honey bees have adapted to use a type of ‘Mexican Wave’ in order to warn returning
foragers of hawking AH’s, so the bees will return to the colony via a different route. As with
European Hornets, bees are known to ‘ball’ the AH in order to overheat it and kill it.
Rob Williams.
The Galicia Experience
www.herefordshirebeekeepers.org.uk 6 of 13 March 2020
I thought the presentation by Xesu s Fea s was well worth studying and I hope it will be written
up in the BBKA news by someone more expert than me. Xesu s is the youngest member of the
Academy of Veterinary Sciences of Galicia in Northern Spain. He comes from a family of
beekeepers and works in the University of Santiago de Compostela, funded by various grant
awarding bodies including the Deputacio n de A Corun a Government.
The Asian hornet first arrived in Galicia in 2014 with two nests found and destroyed. By last
year there were over 2,500 nests. Xesu s's lecture covered the arrival and spread of the hornet,
its economic impact, current research and future needs. This invasion has had a considerable
effect on the economy of Galicia, estimated at over 4.5 million euros per annum. A single hornet
can catch between 25 and 50 bees per day and once worker honey bees in a hive have been
polished off, the hornets enter the hive and eat any honey they can find. The arrival of hornets is
not only of concern to beekeepers; they are not selective in their prey and could decimate the
native insect population. The hornet occasionally causes human fatalities when the nest is
disturbed (3 in Galicia in 2018, 5 last year), but its effect on fruit growers is considerable.
Hornets are partial to apples and grapes, and can ruin a crop in very short order in the autumn.
They also adapt well to life in the city and nests can be found in many unlikely situations: under
eaves, up pylons, in caves, in undergrowth and up trees. The nests are strong and weather
resistant and extremely difficult to spot.
Gynes (reproductive females destined to become queens) are produced in large numbers in the
autumn. Some have been found hibernating in the roof of nests taken down in winter. Many fail
in the spring but sufficient succeed in becoming reproductively active to cause major problems,
and once the first workers emerge the nest expands rapidly and may decamp to build a large
secondary nest in the vicinity of the first.
Xesu s is working on methods of reducing the spread and impact of the hornet. He is not in
favour of large scale trapping of queens in spring, as the danger of "by catch" is too great, but if a
bait and trap can be made as selective as possible, this might help. He will shortly publish a
study on the efficacy of various commercial traps. He has also worked on the production of a
sexual pheromone lure to be used in the autumn. The aim is to release female hornet
pheromone from dispensers that act as false sources; alternatively, pheromone is released at
such a high rate that the male is disoriented and unable to detect the scent of the female.
Mary Walter
The Jersey Experience
Before I start, I want to remind readers that the UK has different laws regarding invasive species
and some methods employed in Jersey are not legal here!
Alistair Christie is the coordinator of the effort to control the spread of Asian Hornets in Jersey.
He gets sent reports of possible sightings from all over the island and then uses teams of
verifiers to confirm the sightings. If the sighting is confirmed he then sends out his trappers and
tracking teams to locate the nest which is then destroyed. He also liaises with the media and all
involved parties to ensure safety and accuracy of information.
www.herefordshirebeekeepers.org.uk 7 of 13 March 2020
Asian Hornets arrived in Jersey in August 2016 and in 2017 seventeen nests were discovered
and destroyed. 2018 saw that number increase to 55 and rose again in 2019 to around 65.
Alistair and his team have found that the Hornets will nest just about anywhere, with nests
being found in high trees, hedges, ground, garages, a boat and even one on a costal cliff. He says
they are getting better at finding and destroying the nests each year, but they still had a few
worrying late season wasp sightings and a few old nests.
They concentrate most of their trapping efforts in the summer rather than in the early spring
because the natural mortality rate of emerging queens and primary nests are high. They use a
trapping – bait – and track method to help locate the nest. (only allowed here by trained
inspectors). They have also used radio tracking successfully, finding a nest within two hours.
With improvements in this technique he hopes to use it again in the coming seasons.
Once they have found and destroyed the nests they continue to monitor the area to ensure that
there was only one nest responsible. They had an incident where they found a nest within 10
metres of one they had previously destroyed. The destroyed nests are taken down for dissection
to determine if there has been a release of virgin queens.
Alistair has said that communication is one of the main requirements to keep the hornet
numbers down. He has seen media coverage with the wrong wasp shown which he tries to
rectify very quickly to stop unwanted misidentified calls. E-mail and the Asian Hornet app* site
are common ways of reporting. He has had a few continuity problems with the Asian Hornet
app as the site is administered in the UK. This is an issue he hopes to resolve this season.
They have had 782 reports with 404 verified and 65% of the reports came with pictures.
Alistair likes to use Google’ My Maps’ to help locate and plot nest locations.
When the day finished with a Q&A period, the question was asked of the presenters; is it
reasonable to think that we can keep the UK free of Asian Hornets? The consensus was that we
will eventually have to deal with them becoming established here (nature will find a way). That
being said, every year that we can keep them out is one where we can learn and benefit from
other country’s experience and ongoing research.
Alistair has extended an invitation to anyone who would like to come and learn about
controlling Asian Hornets to feel free to contact him.
HBKA has an Asian Hornet Action Team (AHAT) set up to assist in helping to verify sighting and
report back to the bee inspectors as and when the case may arise. In the future it may become
necessary to have a more active role in the management of this pest but for now we are here to
assist.
In closing the most important thing we can do to help stop this pest is to stay vigilant and work
with DEFRA , BBKA and the NBU.
Andy Spanjers
*Apple: https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/asian-hornet-watch/id1161238813
*Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.ac.ceh.hornets
www.herefordshirebeekeepers.org.uk 8 of 13 March 2020
Honey highs
Last year I participated in the national honey monitoring scheme. You send them samples of
your honey which they then analyse the better to understand what is happening in the
countryside – pesticide residues, possible threats to the floral resources of pollinating insects,
etcetera. In return they send you a DNA analysis of your honey. Recently I received the results
for last year:
Sample 1:
This was taken early in the season, at the end of April
No great surprises, mainly brassicas, turnips. A small amount of oil seed rape (OSR) which I had
not had the previous year. I was expecting to see OSR in the results this year as when I was
running up the extractor in September, I had heard the thud, thud of lumps of crystallised honey
breaking off from the comb at speed and hitting the side walls.
www.herefordshirebeekeepers.org.uk 9 of 13 March 2020
Sample 2:
This was taken towards the end of the season
Again, no great surprises – to begin with. Lots of hedgerow stuff, bramble and clover etcetera.
But what is that at the sixth most abundant variety of pollen? – Cannabis sativa! I reacted in the
same way any other reasonable, sensible person would.
I panicked.
There have been high profile busts of farmers in Herefordshire taking farm diversification a
little too imaginatively. What if one of my neighbouring farmers had decided to become more
enterprising? Or perhaps somebody in the village has started growing their own – a variation on
The Good Life. Worst of all, what if organised crime gangs were operating in the East LAN area?
If I go to the police will I wake one morning to find the severed head of a bee on my pillow next
to me?
www.herefordshirebeekeepers.org.uk 10 of 13 March 2020
I urgently emailed the people that run the honey monitoring scheme - who were of course being
inundated with hundreds of more reasonable enquiries from other beekeepers who had also
just received their results.
As I waited, I did some research. Cannabis sativa is not normally a nectar source of preference
for honeybees, but in some parts of the world it is a very welcome and timely crop to fill the
local equivalent of the June gap. In the US (where else?) the recent legalisation of marijuana
farms has been an observable benefit to local honeybees, in certain specialised situations.
Honeybees do not have the receptors for the active constituents of cannabis, so they may fly
high, but they do not get high.
At last they replied – in effect, and in the immortal words of Corporal Jones: “Don’t panic!”
It is not worth bothering the police. Because of the way the samples are taken it could be just
that on one day a small number of bees had visited one rogue hemp plant somewhere. There
had been one other record of cannabis sativa pollen in the UK in 2019 – somewhere down in the
south east – but similarly no cause for alarm.
I breathed a sigh of relief. No need to contact the police. No problems in selling my honey.
You too can get free DNA testing for your honey
If you too would like to have your honey DNA analysed this year go to: https://honey-
monitoring.ac.uk/ and ask for their sampling packs.
It costs nothing. It helps them, it helps you. They are short of contributors from our part of the
country so they will welcome you, but do look at the website for instructions. Taking the honey
samples is dead easy, but it must be done in a very specific manner; fresh and direct from the
combs. Next year perhaps we could all compare our honey DNA profiles.
And I have just doubled the asking price for my 2019 honey.
Roger Gill
www.herefordshirebeekeepers.org.uk 11 of 13 March 2020
In the Garden
Not quite the garden this week, but the forest!
These interesting images where sent in by Debbie Smith and show that it has not only been
humans who have lost their homes to the recent
weather events. This unfortunate colony of
bees lost the home they had built in an ash tree
when storm Dennis swept through a wood near
Brilley on the Welsh Boarder.
The nest was some 3m40 long, with a width
that ranged between 10 – 20cm.
The comb was fresh indicating that it was most
likely built during last summer.
www.herefordshirebeekeepers.org.uk 12 of 13 March 2020
Bees in the media
Bee stings
Contrary to popular belief, worker bees stay alive for 18-114 hours after the sting has been
inserted into the skin, and continue playing their role as defenders. When the bee escapes, its
autotomized sting continues to embed itself into the would over a period of ~30s, and venom
can still be delivered. It is noteworthy that at least 90% of the venom sac content is delivered
within the first 20s after the stinging event, and removal of the stinger 1 min after this event is
unlikely to reduce venom-induced toxicity.
It can be speculated that a non-allergic person weighing 60-70 kg has a 50% chance of death
upon being stung by 1000-1500 bees, although death caused by only 200-500 stings have also
been reported.
Bee Updated: Current Knowledge on Bee Venom and Bee Envenoming Therapy
Front. Immunol., 06 September 2019 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2019.02090/full
sent in by Debbie Smith
Bob’s Beelines
We won’t talk about the weather. But we have had rain and wet
weather from October 2019 to the present day.
Not good for our bees, in my opinion our bees may be short of pollen
which is part of their food chain. You may need to feed Candipolline
Gold to supplement their food. I have Candipolline in stock.
Keep your mouse guards on for the time being as mice will be
looking for somewhere dry.
Due to mild weather the bees are flying but they are getting blown away in the strong winds and
get lost so some hives may become weak.
The season may take off in March so be ready with your equipment. Put your Asian hornet
traps out in March the queens may be out.
That’s all for now.
Bob & Kath Cross
www.herefordshirebeekeepers.org.uk 13 of 13 March 2020
Committee Members
Chairman : Andy Tatchell
Vice Chairman : Debbie Smith
Secretary : Mary Walter
Acting Treasurer : John Robinson
Membership Sec. : Steve Utley
Committee: Roger Gill, Rob Williams, Robert Cross, Nicola Percival
LAN CO-ORDIINATORS
North LAN: Mary Walter
East LAN: Sue Garrett
South LAN: Val Lilwall
To contact a member of the committee please look on our website for the appropriate email address:
https://www.herefordshirebeekeepers.org.uk/
The Herefordshire Beekeepers Association is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation. Members of the committee
are also trustees.
Further details at: https://beta.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-details/?regid=1174917&subid=0
If you have contributions to propose for this Newsletter please contact Kirsten Ellerby at:
If foul brood is suspected, contact our RBI, Colin
Pavey email [email protected] Phone 07775
119471, or seasonal bee inspectors: Gordon Bull
07867 351626 covers the Worcestershire/
Herefordshire border. Noel Parker 07900 404245
covers some of the North Herefordshire area.
