Pollination

This year has not been an easy one as weather has been particularly uncooperative.  Wind, rain and cold have meant that bees have worked with difficulty and farmers have not been able to spray easily. I did have an unfortunate spraying of Tracer during the day for control of flower mite in plums at full bloom while my bees were in the orchard.  By chance I met the spraying tractor and stopped it and when confronted the farmer was apologetic, although tried to blame the labour which is of course not possible as managers have to sign out poison.  Although Tracer does not have a residual effect it is extremely toxic to bees on contact and need to be sprayed at night.  Nine hives were badly affected and although were not totally destroyed will be useless for pollination or honey production for some time. If you find your bees very weak after plum pollination then check on the growers spraying programme.

Organic Honey

I recently had a long conversation with Tim Jackson who referred me to BDOCA as an accrediting agent for organic honey production.  BDOCA has a web site and you may be interested in following up on the information available or asking for them to send you specific data regarding organic honey.  There is a need that we all insist on registrations numbers being displayed on labels if honey is to be called organic.

“Honey” used as a promotion selling word on labels

Some products are using Honey as an attractive word to persuade consumers to purchase their product. No mention is made of the actual amount of honey contained in the product. Honey sometimes is not even listed as an ingredient. This may be regarded as misleading the consumer and although there is draft legislation to ensure that a minimum percentage of a product is present in the product being advertised it is difficult to prosecute at this stage unless the advertiser is blatantly misleading.  We need to phone in and prod the advertiser who uses our product to promote without sufficient evidence on the label to justify the use of “Honey”. If honey museli, cough drops, tea, cakes and a host of other product use honey for promotion then the products must contain sufficient honey to justify the use of honey for its promotion.

Legislation regarding the Cape Bee Problem

Present legislation requires that Cape Bees North of the demarcated line are destroyed. Normally this has been done when dark Cape Bees are detected in Scutelata colonies. Problems arise when beekeepers share forage sites and clean colonies become infected by other bees that have also been moved into the area.  Particular beekeepers generally destroy colonies with dark bees present in order to keep the infestation to a minimum.  There is, no action taken against beekeepers that do not destroy ‘infected’ colonies.

In order to seek advice regarding this problem I had a long discussion with Prof Robin Crewe.  He made some extremely valid points:

1)    Colour is only an indication of Cape laying worker and in order to be sure either an ovary inspection or DNA analysis is necessary.
2)    The legislation is now ten years old and some significant findings have emerged regarding the problem, which means that it needs to be re-examined in the light of recent findings.
3)    If colonies are queen right and in apiary sites further than 500m apart then infestation is unlikely.  However if colonies are queen less then the risk of infestation increases.
4)    Complaints regarding this issue need to be followed up in order to check on cases but this will need trained inspectors and access to bee sites.
                                  
Affiliation with AgriSA

Board Members met with the directors of AgriSa to discuss better affiliation between SABIO and AgriSA.  The meeting reflected many positive reasons for a closer liaison between the two bodies as we each have similar problems and AgriSA does have links to Government and trade organizations which may prove useful for SABIO to make use of.  They do, however, require a substantial annual registration fee and we need to seek feedback from members to see whether they would support this link or not.  The Board meeting in November will make a decision regarding the matter but any feedback from members will be welcome.

Mentorship and emerging farmers

The five projects are all underway and regular reports are being sent to the Dept to ensure that we are able to continue with the project.  Progress is not dramatic but by starting with small groups and mentoring their progress we hope to make a more lasting impact that by trying to succeeded with huge projects, which generally raise expectations without long lasting results.

Improving access to bee sites

Bee sites are the crucial factor in any bee operation.  Without good sustainable forage all expertise and effort is wasted. We need to tackle this problem with serious determination in order to make a breakthrough.  There are two possibilities: either to improve existing forage by extra planting or stopping the removal of forage or to explore better utilization and understanding of existing forage.  In addition we need to have some idea of the distribution of colonies to identify where forage is under utilized.  This is the real crunch as because forage is so vital beekeepers keep sites secret – unless we can overcome this lack of trust we shall remain in the dark regarding forage potential. All rather a vicious circle made more vicious by beekeepers stealing hives from other beekeepers.  If hive theft is an issue then sites will become even more secretive.

In spite of these difficulties we need to make a start and many have tried to create a forage map.  This is an excellent suggestion but has the problem that it will depend on feedback from beekeepers who are probably the worst record keepers of statistics.  Please let me know if you have any suggestions in this regard.  I have kept all the comments on the discussion group and will pursue them with whoever is interested in doing so.

Book Prize

Eddy van Zyl has offered two lovely books on beekeeping as book prizes which we hope to award in February next year.  The one will go to the beekeeper or Association who has recruited the most beekeepers to register with SABIO.  The other will be awarded to the best photograph of bees in action. There will be an entry form posted on the web and in the next journal so keep a look out for this.

Next up:

Bees starving in orchards
Board Meeting on 4 November
Bee sites in Conservation Areas
Badger Sticker – should it mean more than just Badger friendly?
Training – Agriseta accreditation of courses
Translation of "Blue Book" into Afrikaans