Edutainment
Pure Peninsula Honey runs regular training days for aspiring apiarists.
Stay posted for up and coming training dates.
Queening Field Day 2007- A Success!
Every 12-15 months a beehive must be re-queened. After this period of time a queen bee starts to become unproductive, the hive develops disease and the ultimate result of this is less honey. Re-queening involves finding the queen in a hive and replacing her with a new younger queen. This means finding one bee among 50 000! Re-queening is essential to the productive maintenance of any hive, commercial or hobby.
On Sunday March 4, Pure Peninsula Honey held a field day for hobby beekeepers and those just starting out in the occupation. The objective of this day was to give people a chance to observe and participate, thus gaining hands on experience at a commercial level. This opportunity was one a book could never provide.
Over the course of Re-queening Day, many issues were covered. These topics included:
- Seven ways to find a queen bee.
- Have a go at finding the queen.
- Introducing a new queen bee to the hive.
- Disease control.
- Tour of the extraction and bottling plant.
- Sugar testing for the Varroa Mite, which sucks the blood of the adults and developing bees.
There were 3 Foulbrood slides taken on the day. The result came back as secondary EFB infection, for those that saw how 'sticky and ropy' it was. Taking advantage of the slide smear test and honey test is definitely worthwhile.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the volunteers who donated their precious time to making Re-queening day a complete success. Thankyou to Rob Arnts, Rod Gell, Margot Hunt, Graham Hunt, Gavin Jamison, Peter Kaczynski, Zac Long, Cheryl Long, Mike Love, David Lyon, Dale Richards, Joe Riordan, Reinhard Schlossus, James Seipel, Eric Smith, Sandra Smith and Aris Wolswinkel.
Thankyou also to the 120 people who attended Re-queening day, and for the feedback and support you gave to the bee industry. Some feedback from the day:
- ".Being able to find a queen with confidence was certainly most useful."
- ".Extremely informative day."
- ".Probably the best field day I have ever attended on beekeeping."
- ".The knowledge shared and the willingness of commercial beekeeper's to spend time with hobby beekeepers like ourselves to expand our knowledge and experience was greatly appreciated."
The possibility of holding another information day in the near future for anybody who may be interested is extremely likely. Hence we would like to extend our encouragement to all of you to email us your expressions of interest, and topics you would like to learn more about.
Please direct all your welcome feedback and enquiries to:
John Winkels, Pure Peninsula Honey
Ph/Fax: (03) 5978 8413
Email: enquiries@purepeninsulahoney.com.au