Health & Importance of Wax Comb by Jennifer Berry

On Wednesday 6th January our latest zoom talk was delivered by Jennifer Berry, a Research Professional at the University of Georgia, USA, on a day when events in Georgia may well prove to be historically pivotal! A good audience of beekeepers from across Avon and Somerset watched the talk live, and it has been recorded for those unable to attend. [https://bees.caes.uga.edu/about-us/jennifer-a--berry.html]

The main theme of Jennifer’s talk was on Queen rearing, but she also talked about the importance of clean comb to the colony, and how the level of contaminants built up in the comb over several years. Her research also showed that much of the foundation bought from commercial suppliers was already contaminated, as a result of this Jennifer had changed to plastic foundation, itself a potential topic for discussion. Jennifer’s work shows that over time pathogens and pyrethroid deposits build up in the comb, the cell size becomes smaller and the colony less productive. She recommended the regular refreshment of comb, something that I think as a branch we are quite good at anyway. I think also it is likely that foundation produced in the UK would have much lower levels of pyrethroid contamination than that bought in the USA, but I have no figures to back this up. Jennifer’s methods of queen rearing were probably more relevant to larger beekeepers, but there were plenty of tips relevant to the smaller scale beekeeper. The importance of choosing queen cells from the youngest and best fed larvae for example.

Jennifer placed the temperament of the Queen as the most important aspect of choosing breeding stock, something that I think most of us would agree with. She also emphasised the importance of developing good drone lines as well as good queen lines in our breeding programmes. She advocated inserting a frame of drone foundation into each good colony to ensure a plentiful supply of drones from these colonies. I think that many of us just assume that "there will be drones up there" rather than actively producing good drones.

One of the attendees at the meeting was Julia Common from the University of Vancouver, who had delivered one of our previous talks. I found it fascinating that we, as a small bunch of beekeepers in the UK, were able to facilitate a live discussion between a beekeeper who had kept bees in a Georgia jail, and a beekeeper who had kept bees in an inner-city area of Vancouver!

A recording of the talk can be viewed using the passcode rh!LR76f at:
 https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/dNelTNfRk17oSDL9zx9B4xqUc8JXx-yL3ZdtiwFAxtokSnlmiGii_Z7NxkM7Cc0C.xclt4at8LrgqzF7J
 
David Capon 7/1/20