Author: Graham Kleinschmidt

(Address to Tocal Field Day Oct. '86) (from THE AUSTRALASIAN BEEKEEPERNovember, 1986) (Ed. Note: Way back when, as a beginning beekeeper who had just started trying to make a go of becoming a commercial beekeeper, I was avidly reading as much material as I could lay my hands on. I was also attending Field Days, and heard Graham Kleinschmidt give the following address at the 1986 Tocal Field Day. I was very pleased that the then Editor of The ABK, Bill Winner, printed Graham’s talk in The ABK....

Author: Bruce White

The territory now occupied by the Republic of Uruguay was discovered in 1516 by the leader of a Spanish exploration party, named Juan Diaz de Solia. Uruguay in South America is boarded in the north and north eastern frontiers by Brazil and separated from Argentina by the Rio de la Plata river in the south and the Rio Uruguay in the west, the east is boarded by the Atlantic Ocean. Uruguay covers 176,215 square kilometres, there are no impenetrable forests or deserts regions or mountains the...

Author: Pele Cannon

As announced in the May issue of the ABK, and also in the recently released RIRDCHoneybee R&D News (No.5 May 2010), I have recently been selected as a Climate Champion, representing the Honeybee Industry.As I explained in the last issue, the Climate Champion Program is being run by the...

Author: Des Cannon

My wife and I recently enjoyed our first visit to Darwin, as part of a trip on the Ghan from Darwin to Adelaide. About a month before we left, Tas Festing, a Northern Territory beekeeper, rang to renew his ABK subscription. I asked him how far Humpty Doo was from Darwin, and promptly received an invitation from Tas to visit him at Humpty Doo. Furthermore, he would also pick us up from our hotel and give us a Cooke’s tour of the Humpty Doo area. Too good an opportunity to pass up!! True to his...

Author: Des Cannon

At the end of our recent cycling trip through the Balkans, Slovakia and Austria, we spent the last 5 days with our German beekeeper friends, Andreas Hahnle and Christiana Keppler, at Wallenstein. The morning after they picked us up from Frankfurt, Andreas had me out at 7.00am, helping him to catch and cage virgin queens from mating boxes in his back yard. Why catch the virgins if they were in mating boxes, you say? Because these virgins were destined to be instrumentally inseminated. Each of...

Author: Des Cannon

By the time readers receive this Issue, Spring will be well underway, the brood nest will have expanded and hives should be booming. Now is the time for beekeepers to give thought to increasing their hive numbers, even if it is only from one hive to two hives. There are some good reasons for doing this. 1.       When I started beekeeping, Bruce Ward said to me, ‘It is always easier to keep two hives than one. If one queen dies, you can take eggs from the good hive, give them to the weak hive,...

Author: The Editor

By the time readers receive this Issue of The ABK, almond pollination will almost be finished. With a Spotted Gum honey flow happening on the NSW South Coast over winter, a lot of beekeepers had to pull their bees out of the South Coast to honour their commitment to provide bees for the almonds. A few (a very few) beekeepers have commented that this shows the ‘craziness’ of going to the almonds – ‘they had to leave a good honey flow!’ It is these few beekeepers, who make that sort of comment,...

Author: Des Cannon

As the title suggests, this is not by any stretch of the imagination meant to be a definitive account of beekeeping in Nepal. It is simply an account of some observations made on beekeeping, both managed and wild, whilst trekking in the Annapurna and Everest regions just before Christmas, 2011. On the second day of our trekking holiday in the Annapurna region, we reached the small village of Ghandruk. The village was in the heart of the area from which came the Nepalese Ghurkha soldiers,...

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...