Meck Bees Mecklenburg Beekeepers Association

Meets the 3rd Thursday of each month at 7 pm at

3100 Selwyn Avenue

(corner of Selwyn and Woodlawn)

Mailing address: 121 Hermitage Rd Charlotte NC 28207

704-358-8075

President -George McAllister

Vice President -Richard Flanagan

Treasurer -Libby Mack

Chaplain -Jimmy Odom

This Month’s Meeting/Program

Our own Keyne Cheshire will speak on building Top Bar Hives. These are unique ways to

raise honeybees . Come and learn

a new way to keep bees.

This months refreshments are provided by

Greg Clements

March 2011

Here is a link to a site that helps people identify honeybees: http://www.greatsunflower.org/files/images/How_to_tell_a_Bee.pdf

Mecklenburg Beekeepers Association

Buddy Gray, one of our new beekeepers, made this custom hand carved table that also can be used as a storage area.

The photo shows worshipers gathering around candles that are stuck onto the top of jars of honey that have been arranged in the shape of a cross in the Church of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin in the city of Balgoevgrad, Bulgaria. The Balgoevgrad, Bulgaria. The day of Saint Haralampi, the Orthodox patron saint of beekeepers, is celebrated every February 10th.

Saint Haralampi - Patron Saint of Beekeepers

Mecklenburg Beekeepers Association

Speakers for 2011 Mar Keyne Chesire Top Bar Hives Apr Tyler Stout (UNCC Honor Student) Identify Behavior Of Workers and Drones May Roger Simonds USDA Gastonia Lab reseasch

Beekeepers Yearly Management Calendar for March

Take out apistan Strips Leave strips in for 45-56 days, but no more.

Treat with Fumidil-B for Nosema control

http://wildthingsinabox.blogspot.com/2011/01/planning-plan-bee.html

Planning @ Plan Bee

Here is a great site to visit by one of our own local beekeepers. It is a great site to post info on local beekeeping.

Mecklenburg Beekeepers Association

http://www.couriermail.com.au/ipad/asian-bee-scourge-packs-4b-sting/story-fn6ck8la-1226008590767

Asian Bee Xcourge Packs $4b Sting

Masses of Asian honeybees - dubbed ``cane toads with wings'' - are on the fly and could become a major problem. But authorities are poised to axe an eradication program that had been slowing the spread of swarms from north Queensland. Without eradication, ex-perts warn the bees will infest the whole country. The cost to the Australian public health system is estimated at $20 million. There also are warnings it could devastate the multi-billion-dollar agricultural sector by wiping out European bees that are necessary for pollination. Beekeeper Maurice Damon (pictured), who transports hives from farm to farm for pollination, is part of the $4 billion industry threatened by Asian honeybees. The ``scourge of the Orient'' is native to Indonesia but has hitched rides into Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, parts of the Torres Strait and north Queensland. They travel in huge swarms of up to 10,000 bees. About five times a year they divide to establish new colonies in building crevices. More than 340 swarms have been found in Queen-sland since the species came to Australia in a yacht that docked in Cairns in 2007. Even with a $3 million eradication program, the pest is now as far south as Innisfail. However, at its latest meeting of Department of Primary Industry chief executives from around Australia, the Asian Honeybee National Management Group declared ``it is no longer technically feasible to achieve eradication''. It is understood Queensland the only state with Asian honeybees wants to continue the eradication program but other states do not see the value. Queensland Primary Industries Minister Tim Mulherin said the national decision to stop funding the eradication program was ``disappointing''.

URBAN Queenslanders face an invasion of swarming bees that could infest houses, schools, shops, letterboxes, trucks and hives.

Carl Albrecht, one of our club members, took this recent photo showing his bees already storing up nectar.

Mecklenburg Beekeepers Association

Here's a nerve-wracking notion. Let's say you have an illegal plant in your garden or even in your home. And let's presume this plant (because it's marijuana, or some genetically altered vegetable that's illegal in Europe) will get you in trouble if the police find out. Now imagine that your local police have their own bees, bees they release each morning to scour the neighborhood looking for illegal plants. Getting nervous? Now look at this interview with a man who appears to be some kind of London Police Inspector with their "Genetics Surveillance Unit": This video was created by Thomas Thwaites. He calls it, "Policing Genes." In it, Mark Machan, identified as a Metropolitan Police Bee Keeper, explains how the police maintain 43 bee hives in South London and, "a little bit of [nearby] Kent," how these bees collect pollen in the neighborhood and then, being bees, they return to the hive to tell the other bees exactly where the good plants are. Bees give directions by performing a "waggle" dance. Wikimedia Commons Rough Translation: the plant is at 1521 Park Lane, left of the

The police, meanwhile, have developed software to read bee communications. As Mr. Machan explains, "There's a video camera in each hive. And what we're able to do is to decode that, to tell us where the location of the pollen is." In the video, a computer seems to lock onto the waggle dance and transmit decoding signals in green, red and blue. The police, the video suggests, will then check the pollen. If it comes from an ille-gal plant, they simply note down your address (thank you, bees), get a warrant and drop by and arrest you. The cop in the video is very up front about this surveillance technique. Mr. Mahan matter-of factly says: We use bees because they're a natural resource. We don't have the time or money to use human beings. And of course bees can go anywhere they want. They run about, so they can go through windows, into gardens quite freely, houses. And they don't need warrants, whereas we would, and for the time for us to gain a warrant of entry takes a lot of time, a lot of bureaucracy so that the time that's saved through that, and the money, we can put police on the streets where they need to be seen.

That's when I noticed this video was not a news story. It was part of an art exhibit at a gallery in London, The Wellcome Collection, so the video, the posters, they aren't real. Thomas Thwaites made this up. It's a fantasy. But not a complete fantasy. As far as I know, computers can't read bee dances. We don't have police cameras in bee hives. And, I thought, we don't (yet) dust, sort and categorize bee pollen to catch criminals — except occasionally. In an interview with Regine Debatty of the "we make money not art" blog, Tho-mas Waithe says he based his video on research in "pollen forensics" at the Centre For Security and Crime Science at University College London. That's where he met a Ph.D student named James French who, he says (I didn't check this myself) told him about cutting edge bee-policing: [James French] is working on the transfer, and secondary transfer of pollen from one person to another. Even habitats that seem quite similar (two patches of woodland say) can actually have quite distinct 'pollen assemblages' — like a signature, made up of the types and amounts of pollen from plants in an area. At the moment, by examining a sample of pollen from somebody's clothes, you could be confident of whether or not, for example, "they've been in the same woods where the body was found." This obviously is quite useful if your suspect claims he's been at home in London answering his emails, but the pollen on his clothes isn't from London gardens, but from an oak woodland. Equally, a lack of pollen can rule people out of the investigation. So the police, even if they're not yet working with bees, they are thinking like bees. t first I was irritated by being duped by a news-like video. Then, thinking it over, I got the uncomfortable feeling that Waithe's fantasy doesn't seem all that far-fetched. I'm (vaguely) OK with DNA testing, scent-chasing bloodhounds, police-aiding psychics, but somehow, turning social insects into police intelli-gence units seems just crazy enough, just do-able enough, just attractive enough to the police, that one day we may have to actually cringe when a bee comes wandering through the kitchen window.

Bees That Work For the Police by Robert Krulwich, Theo Cook, Thomas Thwaites

Mecklenburg Beekeepers Association President’s Buzzz

Years ago my wife and I were invited to a New Year’s Eve party where a fortune teller was hired to give readings to the curious ones in the group. A room was set up for the occasion complete with crystal ball and small round table draped with a thick purple velvet cloth. When my turn came, I entered the dark room and was politely asked to sit down and place my hands on the table. The fortune teller immediately began to explain what was going to happen as she studied my palms, turned over a few tarot cards and peered into her crystal ball. After a few minutes she began to describe how she sees my future unfolding. Her comments were well crafted giving just enough details to allow my imagination to fill in the blanks. After it was over I realized my future narrative contained more of my assumptions than her details. If only we could tell the future. Well, in beekeeping we can come close. It’s important not only to know how to predict the future of your hives but understand how to guide your hives towards a mutually beneficial future. The key to foretelling the future of your hives is based on understanding the life cycle of bees. Bees do what they do based on their age and the needs of the colony. For example, when you introduce a new queen into a hive with drawn comb, you will not see worker bees from this new queen until around the fourth week. Or, if you introduce eggs to a queenless hive, it will be around 16 days before she hatches and another 2 to 3 weeks before she starts laying. Let’s talk about the life cycles of queens, workers and drones. Some of the time frames vary by a few days between sources so I am going to use the data from Gordon Waller of the USDA Carl Hayden Bee Research Center. Starting as an egg, it takes 16 days for a queen to emerge from her cell. Once she has emerged and destroyed all the other queens and queen cells, she prepares for flight. Short orientation flights start soon after emerging from the cell and mating usually occurs within 6 to 10 days. If mating takes more than 3 weeks, the queen could become a drone layer. Once mated, the queen starts laying eggs within a week and can lay up to 2,000 eggs each day during spring build up. Therefore it can take around 30 to 35 days from the time an egg is laid destined to be a queen and the resulting queen starts laying eggs. Queens can live up to 3-5 years but are usually replaced every 2 years when their egg laying declines. Worker bees emerge from their cells after 21 days. Their role in the hive can vary depending on the needs of the colony and their age. Typically the first 2 weeks of a worker’s life is spent cleaning cells and feeding larvae. Around the second week the worker’s wax glands mature and they can begin building comb. The workers start leaving the hive to take short orientation flights during week 3 and they shift from cleaning cells and feeding larvae to becoming house bees. As house bees, the workers clean, ventilate and guard the hive. They also store the pollen and nectar. Once the nectar is stored they ripen it into honey. Starting week 4 the workers become foragers collecting pollen, nectar, water and propolis. The younger foragers tend to collect the pollen and the older foragers collect most of the nectar. Foraging lasts around 3 weeks with the death of the bee. Therefore in the summer time, a worker bee lives for around 6 weeks whereas a worker bee born in the fall will survive the winter and live long enough to raise the first brood of spring bees. Not too much to say for the life of a drone. They emerge from their cell after 24 days. Flying begins at 8 days of age and they are able to mate around day 12. About three-fourths of their life is spent resting and the remainder of the time they are flying around in search of a queen to mate with. If they are successful in mating, the act itself kills the drone. Otherwise drones live for 8 weeks and those living in the fall are forced out of the hive by workers and starve to death. None of the drones survive to winter with the colony. As you can see, knowing the life cycle of your bees allows you predict how your hive will progress over time without the need for tarot cards or a crystal ball. With this knowledge you now have the ability to properly manage your hive’s future by requeening, adding or removing frames of brood and/or bees. -George

Mecklenburg Beekeepers Association

It’s Harvest Time!

We have the following equipment available for extracting honey:

Extractor (manual)

• Uncapping tank (use your own excluder)

• Bucket with valve

• Electric uncapping knife

The charge is $5 per day to borrow the extractor with 2 day minimum

You will want to use your own filters and food-grade plastic buckets.

To obtain the equipment:

• Call George McAllister to arrange a time to pick it up. Phone: (704) 579-1169 geomcallister@hotmail.com

• When you pick up the equipment, take an envelope and card to mail in your payment

• Return the equipment promptly, clean and dry

• Mail your payment in the envelope provided

With the growth of the club, there is heavy demand for the extractor in the summer months. There will be a waiting list, so be prepared for a short wait, and when you get the equipment, please return it promptly so the next person on the list can get it. Please don’t pass it on to someone else who isn’t on the list. Thanks!