At the beautiful Tall Timbers Lodge in the rainforest at the edge of the Tarkine Wilderness. Learning about Tasmanian Manuka honey and will be presenting on hygienic behaviour.
Month: May 2015
Pollen Up Close
These are some scanning electron micrographs we I took of bee collected pollen. The first three pictures are from a load of “yellow” pollen from some Eucalyptus species and last three are from a load of “orange” pollen of uncertain origin. The next step is to collect pollen directly from plants to make a reference collection. We can then compare the bee collect pollen against the reference collection to get a more solid idea of what the bees are actually foraging on!
Tasmanian Beekeeper’s Conference Coming Up!
Tasmanian Beekeepers Annual Conference will be held at Tall Timbers Hotel, Smithton on the 29/30th May, 2015
Guest speakers include –
Dr Peter Brooks and Daniel Melconceilli, University of Sunshine Coast – A few pointers on producing active Tasmanian Manuka Honey and Authenticating the floral sources of Tasmanian Honey through chemical profilint, and their anit-flammatory activity.
Mr John Rawcliffe, NZ – UMF Honey Association’s Manuka ID Project
Ms Jody Gerdts – Hygienic Behaviour of Bees
Mr Ben Hooper – Beekeeping in SA & Nuffield Scholarship Report
Mr Sam Malfroy , Plant Health Australia – National Biosecurity Plan
ALL WELCOME – REGISTRATIONS AVAILABLE – EMAIL SECRETARY – secretary@tasmanianbeekeepers.org.au
Heat Sensing Camera Images!
Autumn has finally come in full force and with it cooler mornings that have enabled us to test out our new infrared (heat sensing) camera!
Here are some pictures of a few colonies in nesting cavities and in bee boxes . Ambient temperature this morning was 7-8 C.
This is a tree on the
La Trobe University Bendigo campus that has a feral honey bee colony in a bird or bat nesting box. The whitest part of the picture is the nesting box. It is surprising how much heat trees generate!
The next three pictures are of another feral nest on the way to Maldon, Victoria from Bendigo. You can see the heat from the tires of my ute and in the foreground the orangish pink indicating some heat from the tree. The next picture is a close up of the tree hollow.
Finally, some pictures of bees in boxes. You can see the yellow patch of the cluster in the bottom box of each of the double colonies and see some heat in the mid section of the nucs. Each of the doubles has a solid 8 frames of bees and the nuc boxes have 5 frames of bees.