August Meeting

At our August meeting (back at the usual CIT venue) we will be looking at plans for next years Royal Canberra Show, and discussing how to go about collecting swarms. Bring along your swarm collection equipment and tips. If you hope to collect swarms this season heres your chance to learn how others do it.

July Meeting

The July meeting was held at the Uniting Church hall in Curtain due to CIT being closed for school holidays. Some members might remember we used to meet there some years ago and be interested to know the Square Dancers are still going strong!

Some items of interest at the meeting were:

Herb Waldie provided a presentation of some of the skills and tricks he has developed over the years making wax candles. We noted Gwendas contribution (whether she knows or not!) as items from her kitchen appeared as essential tools! Some of Herbs points were:

Healing Honey

The following is an article by Andy Coghlan that appeared in New Scientist, 26 June 1999. Thank you Roy Bray.

A spoonful of honey could help the medicine go down, say Dutch biologists. They are genetically engineering plants so that honey made from their nectar will contain certain drugs or vaccines.

The honey could either be fed directly to patients, or drugs could be extracted from it. "Its a production system that would require very little purification," says Tineke Creemers of the Centre for Plant Breeding and Reproduction Research in Wageningen. "The protein is concentrated by the bees, so its a very cheap production method."

The researchers also hope that the sugars in honey will act as a preservative, and are investigating whether proteins in honey retain their activity even if it is not refrigerated.

If so, this would be a boon for vaccination programmes in poor tropical countries, which often are hampered by shortages of cooling equipment.

Two discoveries came together to spawn the project. First, to their surprise, Creemers and her colleagues discovered anti-fungal proteins in nectar from common heather, Culuna vulgaris. They wondered if bees pass the proteins undigested into honey and tests of commercial brands showed that they do.

The researchers also fed bees a sugar solution laced with a protein called bovine serum albumin. "The proteins remained intact in the honey and were concentrated twofold compared with the original solution," says Creemers.

Secondly, she and her colleagues discovered a genetic switch, or promoter, which activates genes in the nectary, the organ in plants where nectar is made. So they decided to try to add genes for various drugs to plants in such a way that the genes would be activated by the nectary promoter. Because the promoter is specific to the nectary, these drugs should be produced only in the nectar, where bees could eat them.

They are in the process of genetically engineering petunias so that they produce a vaccine against a disease of dogs caused by a parvovirus. The active component is part of a surface protein made by the virus, which should trigger immunity in dogs. "The dogs would either eat the honey as an oral vaccine, or the vaccine could be purified and injected," says Creemers.

Once the plants are fully grown and begin producing nectar, bees will be unleashed on them to produce honey that the researchers hope will contain the vaccine. Creemers and her colleagues expect to harvest the first honey in a years time. "Its an exciting variation on making vaccines in plants," says Charlie Arntzen of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who is producing bananas engineered to contain vaccines.

Creemers and her colleagues are doing their experiments in glasshouses, to ensure that their bees feed only on the modified plants and to minimise concerns of the vaccine genes being spread by pollen. Because of this they are using bumblebees, which are easier to manage in a contained environment than large colonies of honeybees.

Local Beekeeping Course at CIT

Details of the spring 1999 CIT Solutions beekeeping course are as follows:

Phone enrolment inquiries to CIT Solutions on 62074444 (have credit card ready).

CIT Solutions booklets are available free at newsagents.

Or enrol in person at The Cottage, Vowels Crescent, Bruce CIT.

Nowra Field Days

A number of Association members attended the Field Day at Nowra on Saturday May 29, several couples making it a welcome weekend break.

The Field Day was organised as part of the NSWAA Annual Conference and had the theme of workplace safety. It had a spectacular setting at Nowra Showgrounds, overlooking a beautiful reach of the Shoalhaven River. The day was as bright and balmy as a Not a Hive Crawl Day.

There were some magnificent exhibitions, with many must have gadgets like the Billet Easyloader, a snip at only $12500. The huge range of boilers and stainless steel extraction equipment, essential now as we move to ANZ Food Authority compliance was really impressive. By talking to the traders, at last I know how big my extractor will need to be (8-10 frames for 50-100 hives). Everyone was eager to share knowledge and animated conversation was certainly not lacking.

Indoors, a fascinating array of exhibits meant nobody could simply walk through and out the other side. The stingless bees (no further south than Coffs Harbour pity); Buzzy Bee, the favourite toy of generations of Kiwi kids, and now being hauled by our granddaughter; NSW Dept of Agriculture, led by Doug Somerville, with videos (we now own Endemic Bee Diseases) and pamphlets including forest reports from everywhere. The AHBIC education project costing $200 000 was money well spent. Their hardcover book Honey is magnificent in every way a delight for all ages. A copy of Honey Diseases and Pests is proving to be the best I have seen, as it deals with treatment as well as symptoms a pity I dont remember where I bought it.

Education was emphasised also. OTEN, the Open Training and Education Network, has a huge range of reasonably priced rural courses, including beekeeping. I have enrolled in Small Farm Production and Small Farm Improvements, essential for when I reach the afterlife (after teaching). Forklift driving and equipment handling course information was also available.

Our President made very useful contact with NSWAA officials, who are keen to help us in many practical ways in our negotiations with Dept of Urban Services.

This was probably the most enjoyable, useful and informative day I have spent in a long time. The exhibits, contacts, relaxed atmosphere and drop-dead beautiful scenery were all part of a wonderful Field Day. Thank you NSWAA.

Robert Gardiner

Empty Super Award

It has been suggested (or at least best enunciated) by Robert Gardiner that we initiate a gentle contest for the best/funniest/strangest/most useful story about a bee related experience. We thought we might call it The Empty Super Award. Send your contribution to Peter Macnicol (62814713H) for publication and consideration. To kick things off Robert submits the following:

"I had just bought a hive and brought it home. Margaret told me that I couldn't leave it on the backyard paving as it was a traffic area. Being an obedient chap I walked out , in thongs, shorts and t-shirt, picked it up and started to carry it across the yard! I first realised my mistake when the sun went dark. The buzzing caused my legs to grow to twice normal length and I somehow beat the whole mob inside without a sting. The battering on the door from the bees was a definite don't come back warning."

Note: Not only Empty Super Award contributions are sought for the Newsletter. Any items of interest to beekeepers are welcome. If the item is not original, please identify the source.

Bee Diseases Steering Committee

The Beekeepers Association of the ACT is expecting to be invited to participate in the Bee Diseases Steering Committee, which is a sub-committee of the Beekeepers Industry Council Committee. This is an industry body, supported by NSWAg, that makes recommendations to government. Through participation in the BDSC, it is hoped that there will be co-operation and conformity between NSW and ACT in recognising standards to be maintained and that the Association will be able to put propositions supported by industry in the region to local government. The first meeting is to be at Camden on Saturday 14 August 1999.

Bindaree Beenotes: