Category: Events

Jo Widdicombe: A Route to Better Bees for all Beekeepers

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Wednesday, 7 January at 19:15 for 19:30

We look forward to our first Zoom meeting of 2026 at 7.30pm on Wednesday 7 January when Jo Widdicombe will be speaking about his experiences on his ‘Route to Better Bees for All Beekeepers’.

Jo has a wealth of practical beekeeping knowledge from forty years as a successful beekeeper. He served as president of BIBBA for five years following their message of improving our bees and not importing. This is now of more importance than ever with the dangers of losing the genetic diversity of our native honey bees and bringing in exotic pests and diseases.

Members only. Please join us at About/Membership

Image: Dale Cherry

Annual Meeting in Perth 2025

Published on by Gavin Ramsay

29 Mar 2025, 10:00–16:00 GMT

Queen Rearing

Want to know all about queen rearing? Instrumental Insemination too?​

We are delighted that Darren Molyneaux of Bishop’s Bees, South Molton, Devon, has agreed to be our main speaker this year. Darren is one of the UK experts on both open mating and instrumental insemination and we are excited to hear him sharing his expertise. ​

We will also have II equipment on show for a demonstration, a discussion from our ex-Chair on the benefits and cons of different ways of raising queens, and an update from beekeepers in Orkney​.

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Members please book in here for in-person or Zoom attendance: https://site.corsizio.com/event/67ad461eb599add2e9aaebf8

Anyone wishing to join us please do so here: https://www.snhbs.scot/membership/

Professor Tom Seeley: The honey bee colony as an information centre

Published on by SNHBS

Wednesday, 8 January 2025 at 7:00pm, London Time

We are pleased that Professor Thomas Seeley will deliver our next winter talk.

Tom brings a vast knowledge and experience of working as a scientist in the field of honey bee ecology and behaviour for several decades. He has highly acclaimed publications to his name with his latest book just published in 2024, ‘Piping Hot Bees & Boisterous Buzz-Runners; 20 Mysteries of Honey Bee Behavior Solved’. Join us for an evening that promises to drive away lingering thoughts of winter weather still to come.

The talk is for members only. If you’re not a member, join us here.

[Photo: Tom Seeley on Colonsay, 2019]

First Winter Meeting

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Topic: SNHBS Winter Meeting – Instrumental Insemination and Scottish Native Honey Bees

Time: Oct 31, 2022 07:30 PM London

Join us for our first meeting of the winter on Monday 31st October at 7:30 when Sarah Leahy, John Durkacz and Gavin Ramsay will lead a discussion on Instrumental Insemination. We will share why and how we set about trying the method this summer, with the valued assistance of Angus Nicol from Shetland, and all the difficulties and issues getting everything into place. We will also discuss where we think the technique may fit in for the future work of SNHBS.

[Members only. See October Newsletter for Zoom link.]

SICAMM 2021: the online conference that’s got everyone buzzing

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With over 200 delegates, the first SICAMM online conference about dark European honey bees has been a huge success.

SICAMM has held conferences every two years “to support the survey, conservation, management and breeding of all extant ecotypes and geographical variants of the dark European honey bee Apis mellifera mellifera.” Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, SICAMM was unable to hold the planned 2020 meeting in Ireland and, so the SICAMM committee organised and held its first online conference beginning on 23rd October, 2021. It has been followed with a weekly lecture series held every Wednesday evening at 6pm GMT. These sessions run until 22 March 2022.  

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SNHBS 4th Annual Meeting

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Loch Leven Community Campus, Muir, Kinross – 14 March 2020

By Justine Swinney

Thanks to everyone who attended our Annual meeting on 14 March at the Loch Leven Community Campus in Muir, Kinross.  Considering the uncertain situation we were in just nine days before the full Covid-19 lockdown, we had an impressive turnout; and thank you to everyone for following the guidance at that time in terms of vigilant handwashing etc. 

Jo Widdicombe, President of BIBBA (Bee Improvement and Bee Breeders Association) valiantly journeyed up from Cornwall and gave us two inspiring talks on bee improvement (read more about Jo’s presentation here).

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Identify Those Native Honey Bees – Winter workshop 2018

Published on by Gavin Ramsay

Newbattle Bee Academy – 17 Nov 2018

First of all, a note about the Bee Academy at Newbattle Acdemy: what a wonderful place for a workshop.  For those of you who haven’t visited, it’s a beautifully restored wooden hut, adjacent to the main college building, built for military purposes in the run up to WWII.  It’s now a cosy space – helped by the huge, well stacked wood burner! – well equipped for events such as this and home to an impressive library of bee-related materials.

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SNHBS Annual Meeting

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Our annual meeting this year, held on the 17th March, saw 61 of our 181 strong membership join us at Kinross Community Campus to listen to speakers Per Kryger, Jon Getty and Ian Lennox and to participate in the afternoon’s business meeting of the Society. Thank you to all of you who managed to attend despite the dire weather forecast, and also to those of you who got in touch with well wishes for the day.

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