deejaycee

There's definitely a shift happening/happened, and for the better. The last couple of years when I asked at the beginner's beekeeping course 'who's thinking about making some money/making a living?', half the class raised their hands. This year (a couple of months ago), maybe 10% raised their hands.

It is illegal. Report the listing to Trademe, and to MPI please.

Bindi on the left, Lily on the right. Both complete nutjobs. Neither goes beekeeping, because they are both prone to brain shutdowns, but both are avid beecatchers at home and don't care at all about stings. Bindi suffers from second child syndrome, in that this is the only photo I have of her. Early on, Lily took responsibility for feed quality control Fortunately she doesn't react to stings at all now - but she used to get a swollen lip ocassionally.

Meeting went ahead without you nab We didn't close down, but I have resigned as secretary as I'm just horribly overcommitted at the moment, and while we do have an incoming secretary, she doesn't have the capacity to organise field days and write newsletters as I did previously. As a result we'll be calling a public meeting for beekeepers with the aim of inspiring the formation of a local club. It's going to take me a while to get organised, and there are some key locals I want to attend, so please be patient. I'll get my last buzzsheet out in the next few weeks when we have the meeting plans nailed down. We'll notify the meeting through the buzzsheet, here, our facebook page and any other local news sources we can, so hopefully no-one misses out.

well, that's another 20 minutes of my life I ain't getting back. Although, have to say, the bees were even more impressively obnoxious than other Lusby bees* videos I've seen. * (sorry, I cannot bring myself to call them Dee's bees )

horrible.

pretty much ditto. General rule of thumb for us is Bayvarol in from 1 March, out by 1 May.

Camellias are certainly valuable for bees, and I know Linda Newstrom-Lloyd has found them so for pollen. How useful they might be for nectar I'm not so sure. It's a pretty big family, and whether some varieties are better than others I don't know, but if you do a google image search for camellia you can see the huge variety of flower morphology, from those with complex tight petal arrangements where you can't see a stamen, to those where the flower centre is wide open and stamens prominent. https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=camellia&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiDzuqW1-PYAhUIlJQKHeAqDDEQ_AUICigB&biw=1242&bih=602 I do know our huge camellia tree (it passed 'bush' status a long time ago) on our front lawn gets a lot of attention through a large part of the year.

Give em a bit of time, Ruth. What Alastair said, and the weather is so up and down here at the moment with weird humidity and rain threatening every couple of days... that always sets them on edge. We've got three days rain forecast from this afternoon onwards... none of my girls get a red card for behaviour today.

This'll be going on our new ute later this year: https://www.topmaq.co.nz/shop/automotive/500kg-electric-ute-deck-swivel-crane/ Build a cradle for it to lift the hives, and buy a good quality sack barrow (solid, with fat wheels, long enough toe) to get the hives to the ute, and you're good to go. We built our own ute crane about 8 years ago for our first ute. Still does the job well. Cost about $800 to build the crane and cradle back then. The sack barrow was close to $300, but it's been worth its weight in gold.

Do you not go through Arataki? If so, you are being paid for it, but at the honey price.

Just wash with a bleach soak. For the hive tool, I don't like flaming mine too much, except in the field. -- scrape down and scrub and soak in bleach.

Clifton's profile is here: http://www.afb.org.nz/new-compliance-manager actually it does say "His experience includes sector involvement with the bee industry, " though it doesn't detail the nature of it. overall I thought it looked like a very good background for the job. TBH, an ex-beekeeper in that particular position doesn't really interest me. I think a broader experience (but still agriculturally/natural systems) based gives us more opportunity for progress with the ability to look outside the box than someone who has spent their life doing just what we all do.

I think you're going to have to forgive Clifton the comment about possible other reasons and ignore it. He's new to the job, and I think to beekeeping (though I did see he has other agricultural background, which gave me hope). It's the kind of comment a reporter jumps on to add a bit of mystery to a story, and will push for.... you say to them 'AFB in't the only possible reason', and then they push.. 'like what?'.... so you throw a comment that isn't complete or fully thought out and they grab it and run. I remember thinking similar about a comment he made to the HB Today reporter that did the story on our AFB a week or so ago. 'ooo.. Clifton... that doesn't really add to the impact - don't go weakening your message'.

No-one (who has anything to do directly with the situation) is pointing fingers at beginners, Daniel. But it is a point to note that beginners are more at risk of being secondary transmitters of infection because of their lower experience levels. As for looking outside the region for answers or culprits, that would be an equal mistake. We have more than enough potential problem people in Hawke's Bay to spark a wildfire of this nature without outside help. And no, I"m not saying it came from locals or that it came from outsiders. What I am saying, I guess, is that it's rather pointless all this fingerpointing at various sectors, activities and groups. As John has said, our problems come from individuals of all descriptions from all backgrounds and points of the beekeeping compass. To generalise to a sector or type of beekeeper runs the very real risk of overkill bureaucratic solutions that penalise a whole group and yet still does not effectively address the problem of the individual.