Natural Beekeeping International Forum

[monica]

We have a date!
The next meeting of the Wye Natural Beekeepers will be on Tuesday 29th September 2015 at 7pm.
At Bees for Development, Agincourt Street, Monmouth NP25 3DZ
Bring questions and tell us how your bees are doing.
Hope to see you all there.

[monica]

Our Winter Meeting of the Wye Natural Beekeeping Group will be held on Tuesday 1st December 2015, at 6pm, at the King's Head, Agincourt Square, Monmouth NP25 3DZ.

We've decided to move next door as we ran out of chairs at BfD last time. We'll be in the front room of the pub, meeting from 6pm onwards. The pub serves food for those who want to eat as well as meet. This is an earlier time than usual, requested by some of our members; others may prefer to arrive and stay a bit later.

There will be plenty of time for the usual questions and sharing of experiences of the year's beekeeping. Our theme this time will be Wild Bees: we plan to talk about wild nesting bees, honey bee nest boxes, and recent research on the differences in behaviour and development between managed and unmanaged honey bee colonies.

Looking forward to seeing lots of you there.

[monica]

The next meeting of the Wye Natural Beekeepers will be on Tuesday 22nd March 2016 from 7pm, at The Punch House, 4 Agincourt Square, Monmouth NP25 3BT
At the last meeting we discussed the need to conduct a survey. Collecting annual statistics on the level of management undertaken by natural beekeepers, and colony health, survival and swarming, will help us to develop evidence on the value of natural management. We will discuss this at the meeting, with a plan to send out some questions via Survey Monkey in early April.
We'll also talk about Bee Buddies: how to find another natural beekeeper close by to help when you don't know what to do!
Do come along and join us.

[ingo50]

The survey has gone out in early May and responses awaited. I am aware the other natural beekeeping groups are also undertaking surveys, eg Oxford group. It would be interesting to compare results. If you know of any other surveys, please let me know.

[monica]

The Summer Meeting of the Wye Natural Beekeeping Group will be on Sunday 19 June at 4pm. We'll be visiting the apiary of one of our members near Monmouth. The format will be similar to our visit last summer: a walk around looking at bees and bee forage, followed by tea and talk.
We'll have some early results from the Survey, but it's been a busy season so we may leave discussion of the full findings until our meeting in September.
Let us know if you want to attend.

[monica]

A brief catch-up on some events in 2016:

Our summer meeting was a visit to a natural apiary in Monmouthshire. The difference was that here there are many different styles of hive, from nest boxes and log hives to skeps, topbars and Warre's people's hives. More importantly, each colony is given as much space as possible; the closest is about 30 metres from its neighbour. Unfortunately it was a very misty wet day, so few bees were flying, but we made use of the observation windows to see bees and comb filling with honey.

[monica]

Reporting back on September and December meetings 2016

Between 15 and 25 people come regularly to our meetings now. Some are experienced beekeepers, some are beginners and some are preparing for their first bees. We're organising a buddying system, making sure that new beekeepers can find a mentor to help and support them when they get their bees. The September meeting was also an opportunity to discuss the latest research from North Wales beekeepers, showing that untreated colonies are faring better than treated colonies in their winter loss surveys.

In December Paula gave a talk about the healing benefits of propolis. There were requests for a short 'topbar improvers' course, which BfD will run in the summer, and much interest in Chris Park's skep making course in February.

[monica]

Our March meeting was early this year, on St David's Day. Appropriately for Spring, we discussed swarming. This year members with swarms will be able to contact others locally who want them; let's hope our bees have a good year and we can set our new beekeepers off to a good start. There was much useful talk about how to position bait hives (high up, somewhere you and the bees can see the entrance), and discussion about how and why the swarming process reduces a colony's varroa count.

Ingo will send out another survey later in the spring, collecting information such as whether people are treating, feeding, taking honey, or controlling swarming, and monitoring any colony losses.

Our June meeting will again be apiary visit, but this time we're going to an urban apiary in Newport. There'll be a chance to talk about the different issues urban beekeepers face from their rural friends. More details about this at a later date.