Amateur Beekeepers Australia

If you haven’t done that first harvest….then now’s the time to get cracking.

The competition this year will include categories for honey, honey comb, pollen, propolis, and wax. Details for each category follows.

The Bega Valley club has used AFB Awareness Month to publicise responsible beekeeping across the region. A story featuring biosecurity officer Fay Steward in the local newspaper urged all beekeepers to inspect their hives this October and register with DPI.

The club will soon be taking on a hive monitoring role for the Department of Primary Industries (DPI), which will be establishing 2 sentinel hives at the Port of Eden.

This is part of the National Sentinel Hive Program which was established in 2000 to improve post-border monitoring around Australia for exotic pests of honey bees, including Varroa mites, Tropilaelaps mites and Tracheal mite.

A highlight of the course was the outstanding artistic talent that emerged….as you can see from the amazing mural students painted on a wall at Bega High School, and from artwork on the hives themselves – see following page.

The buds are bursting all over the Valley, so regardless of what the calendars say, spring is upon us! Now is the time to take advantage of those occasional warm still days to inspect your hives.

Lyall led a Question Answer session where members shared beekeeping ideas, problems, solutions, myths and funny stories.  It was a truly fascinating discussion, and highly beneficial to all beekeepers, whether new or experienced.

Our guest speaker Sandy Farrell gave an insightful presentation at the June club meeting on “The reasons for registering your hives and how to go about it”