Last month we met Bee Supplies Otago owners Murray and Heidi Rixon and explored their honey extraction setup and beekeeping operation. There’s more to their work within the apiculture industry though, with Murray a very active American foulbrood (AFB) AP2 hive inspector and beekeeping education a big part of the couple’s motivations, along with growing the sustainability of both their business and lifestyle. Maggie James delves deeper into their story.
By Maggie James
I followed my visit to the Rixons’ beautifully situated Taieri Plains property in June by attending a monthly gathering at the Dunedin Beekeepers Club (DBC) in the city. There Murray Rixon presented an informative session on American foulbrood identification and management.
Whilst Rixon is not a member of the Club he is frequently a guest speaker to AFB workshops.
He’s a good fit for the role too, having held AP2 (‘Authorised Person Level 2’ under the National AFB Pest Management Plan) status for nearly 10 years. Most of the AP2 work is for the Management Agency south and west of Timaru, Oamaru and Invercargill areas, and sometimes Wanaka, Te Anau and Queenstown. In autumn Ministry for Primary Industries Exotic Pest Surveillance work is also undertaken from Dunedin to Invercargill and Queenstown.
Rixon, who is privy to seeing a lot of AFB, arrives this June day with numerous props, which in this instance (having received approval from the Management Agency) include AFB brood frames recently retrieved from two apiaries in Waimate, South Canterbury. Fortunately, Rixon and a collaboration of commercial and hobbyist beekeepers appear to have found the primary source of infection.
“In the beehive I am primarily looking for characteristics of the AFB disease that are different in characteristics to other brood disorders,” he explains.
An important part of his AP2 work is identifying where AFB infections have likely come from, such as the joint effort in Waimate, and while finding AFB and destroying hives and equipment is no joy, there can be some satisfaction in stopping further spread.
“I am lucky to have the privilege of hunting out AFB trails in the landscape. It’s the beekeeper’s worst day if I find AFB, and my worst day if I find nothing,” he says.
At the Club meeting indoors, and under Rixon’s supervision, approximately 35 spellbound members wearing disposable gloves receive an educational experience getting close, eyeballing and handling full-depth brood frames heavily riddled with AFB in various stages. The group inspect, sniff and poke wooden matches in frames, and photograph with mobile phones, whilst grasping Rixon’s words.
It doesn’t take long for the air to be rank with the intense smell peculiar to the presence of advanced AFB infestation.
Rixon explains that often there is not a smell with AFB and the stench is often only exacerbated on a warm day or a heavily riddled frame, plus a new infection often does not have a smell. Rixon believes many beekeepers have problems diagnosing AFB because they have never encountered it, and a textbook AFB photo is only a snapshot.
Furthering the education, he urges the attendant audience to use their mind’s eye to help imagine a clinical AFB infection. A loss of body segmentation among brood is the earliest indicator, and the larvae then becomes off-white, similar in colour to a cup of tea with lots of milk. It then progresses in colour to that of a cup of coffee with milk.
Whether it’s a cup of milky tea, or dark milky coffee, there is consistency of the same texture in any AFB cell no matter the colour. Rixon has a delicious analogy to add to the menu here too, likening the roping to a square of caramel filled chocolate, squeezed and pulled apart! He emphasises that the texture is uniform at all stages, and if you are using a matchstick for diagnosis, ensure that the wood is rough to enable the sticky AFB to adhere to the surface.
Rixon further describes the pupal tongue, another form of visual AFB identification, which is only seen in a fully formed bee, and what the beekeeper sees is the cartilage of the mouth with the protuberant tongue.
Dunedin beekeepers are very proud in having the least AFB cases in New Zealand over the last six to seven years. The city and surrounding area, which does not have many migratory hives, is doing really well with near zero AFB. If someone were to buy a hive or used woodware from elsewhere and bring it into the area, Rixon emphasises that this luck could change overnight from zero to multiple infections.
As well as furthering the AFB education at the Club, Rixon also volunteers alongside Dr Otto Hyink in helping run the Club’s annual spring beginner beekeepers’ training course, and then there is his own educational programmes.
Education, Sustainability and The Good Life
Because of the educational component of their business, the Rixons’ contract extraction plant needs to be free of bees as it doubles as the teaching room. The couple believe in supplying something good, for free, to the Dunedin city and outer regions. Thus, they deliver free talks for school groups, ranging in size from a half dozen, up to 40 kids.
From spring to late summer, these talks are also offered to paying cruise ship passengers, and honey varietals can be purchased on site.
While the energy of the beekeeping couple might power those lessons, it’s solar power that they look to harness to keep their whole facility running.
They have 20 solar panels, producing up to 10kW per hour in good weather. The aim is to produce all the power required for their home and business including the honey extracting enterprise and electric cars and they hope to soon double the number of panels to achieve this. The Rixons have recently completed a pair of dual axis rotating solar panel structures which automatically follow the sun daily, like a sunflower. The motor mechanisms were ordered from China and while waiting on their arrival, Rixon fabricated steel pedestals and designed the aluminium superstructure to hold the panels.
Currently, power produced heats three electric cars, the family house, and the honey house. The latter two have battery storage, and to allow for poor weather conditions at times are still grid connected.
To further aid the family’s aims of self-sufficiency, their excavator is being used to install large wooden poles for what will be a suitably impressive 90m2 polycarbonate green house. They relish the opportunity of planned weather protection to grow all their own vegetables and tropical fruits and the sale of their fruit and veges on site will be a natural progression of their business philosophy. To top it off, they also produce some of their own meat.
To discuss any aspect of this story with Murray or Heidi Rixon, email beesuppliesotago@gmail.com
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