|
Gerry introduced Bernie. Born and educated in Warrnambool. He had a career with Australia Post before a career change in 1977 when he joined Victoria Police. In retirement Bernie is a Justice of the Peace and is active in the local JP's association where he is the secretary of the South West branch of the Royal Victorial Association of Honorary Justices. Bernie enjoys playing bagpipes and was always a member of the local bagpipe group wherever he was stationed. He has played at the memorial tattoo in Leper, Belgium and also at the Menin Gate, Leper on two occasions at the nightly Last Post Ceremony. He is married with one daughter and lives with his wife, Chris at Woodford. Tonight Bernie will give a talk on one of his hobbies, bee-keeping. Bernie started beekeeping 30 years ago in Ararat. He had a maximum of 5 hives in the back yard but also worked with a commercial bee-keeper in the Grampians area from whom he learnt quite a bit. Now, as a retiree, Bernie keeps one hive in the back yard at the moment and intends to increase it to two this year. Bernie talked about the importance of bees to food production and the “very pleasant by-product” of honey. There are 12,000 registered beekeepers in Australia and managing approximately 600,000 hives. 30,000 tonne of honey will be harvested this year in Australia with a gross profit in the vicinity of $90million. There are about 1600 types of honey bees but only about 10 of those will produce any significant quantity of honey for domestic use. 1820 saw the introduction of European honey bees into Australia due to the fact that Australian native honeys do not produce enough honey. Bernie outlined the structure of a bee hive and gave some very interesting facts about the role the bees play. Hive structure consists of a Queen bee, worker bees and drones. A European honey bee hive could have up to 80000 bees. The queen bee is the only fertilised bee in the hive. She will spend her entire life in the hive with the one function of laying eggs. In her peak she will lay 2000 eggs a day and lives up to 5 years. A responsible bee keeper will replace her every 2-3 years. The worker bees are all sterile females. They live for 4-6 weeks in the spring and summer. They start as nurse bees, then as guard bees, then as scouts, and finally they become gatherers. In the winter they stay inside the hive to survive and will live for about 6 months. The drones are all male. They live up to 8 weeks over spring and summer. They eat and sleep and mate with a virgin queen, usually from another hive. They mate once and then die. At the onset of winter they have no further use and will be expelled from the hive by the worker bees and die. More drones will be produced again at the beginning of spring. Drones do not have a stinger. In early spring the most spectacular, and least dangerous, bee swarms are seen. This will happen if they need to produce a new queen, or if there is not enough room in the hive. It's least dangerous because the bees have gorged themselves with honey to sustain themselves while they find a new home. A good beekeeper will try to prevent this kind of swarm by replacing the queen before she is too old or by provided new hives for the bees. Bees collect both pollen and nectar. Both are used as food in the hive. The nectar is converted to honey after being eaten by the bee and mixed with an enzyme in their body and then regurgitated, and through a process of evaporation, will become honey. It's then stored in honeycomb in the hive for future use, or extraction by the beekeeper. Extracting the honey is done by removing the comb, after smoking the bees. After scraping off the crusty capping the comb is spun in a centrifuge to extract the honey. Local laws allow you to keep bees in your backyard as long as certain criteria are met. Please support beekeepers, it will benefit the local environment and you'll be supplied with plenty of honey. Bernie answered a number of questions from members. Gerry thanked Bernie for his talk and presented him with a badge and certificate in recognition of his presentation. An anti-material net will be donated to a family in the pacific islands on Bernie's behalf. |
