Author:

Des Cannon

I have been giving this topic a lot of press over the past few months, because I regard the use of pesticides in our environment as the single biggest threat to the survival of beekeeping – witness the recent poisonings and accidental crop spraying affecting bee numbers in the Wide Bay Burnett area in Qld. Pesticides worry me even more than the threat of Varroa. Varroa has not shut down beekeeping– it has just become more difficult. The threat of pesticides, however, is insidious. At what...

Author: Jeffery Gibbs

To Australian Beekeepers from an Australian Beekeeper INTRODUCTION To respectfully include the outsider, I have to start with an explanation. Australian Beekeepers are very secretive; they tell you about the honey flow when it is in the drum. When called for, general information sharing is thorough, very effective and quick; there are many Australian Beekeepers that can tell you about honey flows and problems from South Australia to Queensland in overnight conversations. They cover vast...

Author: Doug Somerville, NSW DPI

A specialist queen rearing course was held at Richmond, NSW on the 25th -27th March, hosted by the Wheen Foundation and conducted by the two NSW DPI, beekeeping specialists Dr Doug Somerville and Mr Nick Annand. The course was fully subscribed with 18 students who travelled from as far as Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, Northern Territory, Cocos Islands and regional NSW. The course has been developed to provide beekeepers with the skills and knowledge to produce their own quality queen...

Author: John Tadman

The Editor ABK. I wonder how many beekeepers around Australasia are tired of losing hives to AFB and would like to try a new approach. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Several books tell of European beekeepers taking their bees to herb fields to restore the bees’ health. Elsewhere, several plants are described as being “good for bees’ health”, etc. A story did the rounds of south-east Queensland ten years ago of a beekeeper whose hives, surrounded by a large herb garden, escaped the AFB that...

Author: Doug Somerville

August 2010 is the 6th anniversary of an operation on my back.  At times I still have to tolerate a degree of pain and discomfort and that’s just from sitting in a car or at my desk. Working and handling bee boxes can be an occupational hazard.  Most beekeepers, when asked will admit to having a sore back at some stage of their time in keeping bees.  Some beekeepers like me continue to have persistent pain associated with their backs and resort to taking anti-inflammatory medication. I...

Author: Jim Wright

Dear Editor, Does a wounded queen heal? I wonder if your readers would be interested in the story of a queen wounded, near squished, by clumsy handling, and a unique opportunity to follow her recovery visually over the next three days and follow-up for six months?  I have never read such an account or even mention of wound healing in bees. On the 18th February 2010, while putting bees in a display case for a show, I identified the queen and set about to mark her. Knowing full well that you do...

Author: Pele Cannon

I recently attended the induction workshop of the Climate Champion program. This program is run under the Managing Climate Variability (MCV) initiative, an Australian government initiative, funded by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) and Land and Water Australia. The...