Our next SNHBS Zoom meeting is on Monday evening, 28 November, at 19:30, when David Evans will talk to us about bait hives.
This is a members-only event. If you’re not a member and wish to join SNHBS, see the Membership Page here. New memberships will now run until the end of 2023.
[Photo: David Evans]
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.]
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.
Continue reading “SICAMM 2021: the online conference that’s got everyone buzzing”
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).
Continue reading “SNHBS 4th Annual Meeting”
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.
Continue reading “Identify Those Native Honey Bees – Winter workshop 2018”
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.
How do we identify native honey bees? This question is fundamental to everything we aim to do at SNHBS and members were invited along to the University of Aberdeen in November to get a handle on just this question. Forty-five attendees had a full day hands-on introduction to the basic features and traits of Apis mellifera mellifera and got to hear about really exciting new developments in DNA analysis that might be available to hobby beekeepers soon.
Continue reading “Identify those native bees – Winter workshop, 18 November 2017”
by Gavin Ramsay
Forty-six beekeepers, mostly SNHBS members, came to Perth for the queen-rearing workshop organised by the Ochils Breeding Group over two days in August. After a classroom session going through the principles of selection, queen rearing, queen mating and subsequent management, the attendees divided into three groups for the three practical sessions occupying much of the day. Jeff took them through the grafting session, showing the right stage of larva to use and the methods employed to move the larvae into cups for cell raising. Participants worked in pairs to ensure that everyone had a chance to try grafting for themselves, many using magnifying headbands to help the careful handling of larvae of the right stage. John took his groups through everything to do with mating nuclei, the types available with their good and less good points, making them up with young bees and their management. I showed finding and handling queens and demonstrated harvesting queens from mating nuclei after the new queens were established. Everyone was encouraged to try their hand at lifting young workers and handling them as if they were queens. The yellow-spotted workers can still be seen in the MiniPluses now! Continue reading “Summer 2017 Queen Rearing Workshop in Perth”
Compiled by Kate Atchley from texts by Ewan Campbell, Em Mackie and Gavin Ramsay. (Article first published in The Scottish Beekeeper, July 2017)
On 1 April at the Lovat Hotel in Perth, almost 80 members of the newly-formed Scottish Native Honey Bee Society (SNHBS) met to launch and help to establish priorities for the society. In this article we offer news of the launch event as well as confirmation of the society’s aims and initial activities. Continue reading “SNHBS – News from launch event”
