The BFA Spring Convention and Educational Visit to France 2007

Getting there
At Dover the beekeepers coach was unmistakable, bright yellow. Most of the group had joined at various points from Southampton clockwise round the M25: the rest were to join in France. Late reaching the hotel at Beauvais (well over two hours south of Calais), we were still fed a gourmet meal by pleasant staff. Onwards round Paris next morning to Montargis, we met up with the remainder of the party for an impressive lunch.


The packer
The afternoon was spent at a large packing plant, ‘Meils Villeneuve’. They pack French as well as imported honey and pride themselves that incoming honey is in the bottle and out to distributors within a week. It arrives in drums and samples are taken for laboratory analysis: most on-site, including HMF, some offsite. The honey is warmed and bottled on two bottling runs, one large for large volume and a smaller one for specialist honey – both run and set. Jar sizes and shapes were numerous. The honey is labelled and bar-coded, orders are collated and sent out shrink wrapped on pallets, in accordance matching hand held barcode identification to computerised packing lists.
In addition to honey, sweets, cakes, and biscuits, various, were wrapped and processed for distribution. These latter items were not made on the premises. There was a small shop with most of the goodies on display and some beekeeping equipment for sale.
On to Orleans to the Hotel Mercure overlooking the Loire, at this point a fast flowing river about twice the width of the Thames in London.

The equipment manufacturer
Friday morning off to Thomas Apiculture. Thomas caters for all ranges of beekeeper, from the amateur to the professional. Started as a family business in 1905, the organisation was taken over by the current management around 1990, and is now run by a team of 32. The tour of the premises was led by Lionel Bouron. He and Bill Stevens (National Bee Supplies, an agent for Thomas equipment) were able to answer numerous questions as we were shown round the works with shelves of stainless steel, etc, ready for processing. Their main interest is stainless steel equipment ranging from a 3 frame tangential extractor for your two hive beekeeper, to a semi-automatic line that uncaps at one end, feeds into the 48 frame extractor and disgorges the extracted frames at the other end for the big guy. These lines are custom made. What they bring to Stoneleigh is mainly the amateur equipment. As a 60-hive beekeeper a large oblong tank took my fancy: it had an uncapping tray at one end, room for uncapped comb to drip and a 20 frame extractor all built into the one oblong tank – significantly reducing both mess and floor space required. Their latest is a bigger version of a cappings spinner/dryer, which can handle the cappings produced by a tonne of honey – impressive.



A memorable lunch was a served in a neighbouring village. The countryside is flat, a bit like Essex, and was mainly down to cereal and rape, but interspersed with numerous small wooded and heath land area. Wood burning for heating seemed very popular. They do not grow field beans, or borage, but later crops include sunflowers, tree honeys - light and dark (honeydew), heath land honey similar but not as thixotropic as our heather.

A recently commissioned bee farm
In the afternoon Lionel took us to see beefarmers Monsieur and Madame Donneaux. Their 400-hundred operation has been set up recently: the honey house was 4 years old and the hives looked newish.

The extracting facility/honey house about 40 yds long was housed in a large barn. The honey house itself was constructed of plastic coated stainless steel. Supers were wheeled into a hot room, into the next room for extraction, on to the conveyor system described at the Thomas factory. The honey was piped into tanks for bulk sales, and the capping augered into a large capping spinner/dryer. The third room was devoted to bottling, where I noticed a Nassenheider bottler. They appeared to have about 6 varieties of run honey and one set.

 
Spare equipment was stacked in the barn, plenty of it. Frames were made of 4 equal width bars – the lugs were 2" nails embedded 1" deep into the top bar. All boxes including brood boxes were castellated with a small notch in the bottom U of the castellation to locate the nail. To stop the frames from rocking a stainless steel wire with U shaped extrusions, matching the castellations at the top, was pinned about three quarter way down the box. I had wondered what these pieces of wire were for when at Thomas's. I assume the need for these adaptations are to accommodate the triangular blade of the uncapping machine, which would probably slice off any Hoffman spacers.

Outside hives in Dadant boxes were tidily arranged in a double S on metal double U hive stands. All floors were brown plastic varroa floors with a special notch at the front sides to slot onto the hive stands, I assume to prevent slipping off the stands. The top stood 1 foot off the ground, giving good ventilation, but the manipulator would have kneel or sit to prevent backache – one of the questions I forgot to ask.

A more mature bee farm
Saturday we were off to see Maurice Bounaix at Aillante sur Millron. Retail therapy in Orleans for those who stayed behind.
Maurice and his wife have managed 500 colonies for 10 years commercially and took the previous 10 years to build up the business to this level. As a 20 year old he ate honey but confessed ignorance of how or where it was produced. His wife’s maiden name is Ruche (hive in English) so fate must have intervened. Originally a long distance lorry driver he had some experience of wood and metal working and has designed and made a number of pieces of equipment and adapted others. His bees are mongrels. Having tried Buckfast and Caucasian, he now breeds from his best. His queen rearing was not seen.


The trailer (see the photograph) is flatbed with three central axles. The self made (nothing on the market suited his needs) boom loader is bolted onto the centre and has a folding boom. This allows him to unload thirty colonies in a circle around the trailer. The loading cradle is seen next to the front hive on the trailer and can cope with a brood and two supers using a 12volt battery. He uses the same metal hive stands seen at the rear of the trailer and with one hive on the ground. These stack conveniently for transport. To level the trailer, to allow the boom to swing, he has metal legs that slot onto the four corners. The only disadvantage is that unloading is more difficult in restricted spaces such as a wood.

The Toyota pick up has been modified with 3 parallel rail tracks running front to back along the bed. To load supers, the tail lift is lowered, the boom places the supers onto wheeled trolleys, the tail lift is raised and the supers rolled along the tracks to the far end using a long pole. At the end of the pole is a metal bar that detaches and drops into grooves in the rails to stop the trolley rolling back and forth in transit. He loads a maximum of 72 full supers, more empty supers.
His honey processing rooms have gradually developed into what we saw. Most honey is sold in bulk, with some bottled for the local market.


Two concrete gently sloping grooves on the ground align the back of the truck with the hot room entrance. Supers are then wheeled from the tail lift into the extracting room. Here was a duplicate of the previously seen semi automatic Thomas line. He has had this equipment for 4 years. It needed some initial adjustments, but once bedded down has functioned well. A natty back-saving idea was the power lift built into the floor that raised the super to handling height for loading frames into the uncapper.

They are able to deal with one tonne of honey a day, the equipment could manage more! Honey goes through a baffle system into tanks into drums mainly for bulk sales. Capping are augered into a capping spinner which was the small older brother of the one seen the day before. Asked ironically what he did while his wife was busy extracting, he immediately replied without hesitation, repetition or deviation "I'm out with the pickup, taking back supers, managing the bees if necessary, and bringing in the next load of supers."


Some honey is bottled for local markets. We were treated to samples of set, acacia, heath (heather), buckwheat (dark and very strong), and some others. A Nassenheider was again in evidence as the bottling machine.


From late August on, supers are stored in a large insulated container with temperature control at 14ºC to combat wax moth.
Wax is traded for foundation.


A drying cupboard about 2 x 2 foot and 5 foot tall, with netting shelves is used to dry pollen, now one of their major income generators. He sells about a tonne a year. The pollen traps act as full floor, with a vertical strip of stainless steel with 6mm holes acting as pollen remover. The side of the floor has an exit hole for drones, which some workers use to take pollen into the hive. Semicircular mesh gutters slot under the trap to catch the pollen, stopping mould developing.
I did wonder if this type of trap removed too much pollen, but the answer was no, enough pollen seemed to get in.

Supers and frames are made in a workshop.
During a refreshing aperitif of sparkling wine and cassis, etc, etc, we were free to roam the large woodshed and metal working barn.
Pyrethroid resistant varroa is a problem. He uses Amitraz, oxalic acid and thymol.

Many, many thanks to Maurice and his wife and helpers for a very interesting visit.
On the way back we had spotted a bee museum with restaurant attached. The museum being closed until after lunch we took a light (or not-so-light) lunch. The museum had been set up, I suspect, by Villeneuve, with some old French hives, smokers and other oddments, as well as biscuits, sweets, cakes, honey, etc.
Back at the hotel we had our Business Meeting.
Back home via Paris and a trip up the Seine/Eiffel Tower, to the hotel Ibis at St. Omer, a rather pleasant small town. On early to catch the 10.00 ferry to Blighty and home to the real world.


Margaret Thomas (Pollination Secretary)