Leiston & District Beekeepers Association

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2019 SEASON

 

The apiary season will start on the 13th April and continue until the end of August.  Stock will be for sale from 2-2.30pm each week. Taster Sessions for visitors and complete beginners will be held on the first Saturdays of May, June, July and August only.
 

WINTER BEE LOSSES SURVEY 2018

 

An email was recently recieved from Dr Anthony Williams, COLOSS (Colony Loss Monitoring Group) Survey Coordinator for England, the open letter has been reproduced below.

 

Dear Member

In the last decade, elevated losses of western honey bee colonies have been observed, mainly in Europe and North America, but the underlying causes still remain unclear. In 2008, European and USA honey bee experts formed a network "COLOSS" realising that efforts by individual countries to identify the drivers of losses were unlikely to succeed, given the current consensus that causes are complex and can be different between regions and between the years. Now more than 1000 scientists are working together in this network in specific working groups.
 
Last year some of you participated in the COLOSS survey for Winter Losses in 2017.   Thanks to your support for the first time in a number of years we were able to submit a return to the pan European COLOSS Monitoring initiative.   I can report that overall Winter losses were on average 28% for England.  Losses in Europe were on average 16%.  Losses varied from region to region from 9% in Cornwall to  33% in Warwickshire and  41% in Leicestershire, my home regions which were above the national average.  A more detailed note of Winter losses will shortly be presented in the Journal of Apicultural Research.   Some of the highlights of this survey have been presented at Eurabee In Ghent back in November and more recently at Speakers Corner during the Beekeeping convention at the Harper Adams University this weekend.  

We now invite you to fill in the questionnaire for 2019 which you will find below. This will enable us to compare your answers with other beekeepers. With your data we can estimate the relative risk of colony losses for beekeeper decisions such as Varroa treatment, migration of colonies and comb replacement. We also aim to identify differences in relative mortality risk between regions. This will enable follow up research projects in specific regions.
At your option your personal details may be recorded however we undertake not to disclose them to any third party to protect your privacy.
The survey can be accessed through the following link 
 

https://www.bee-survey.com/index.php/368949

Finally your help is much appreciated. Please can I ask you to promote this survey and the questionnaire link through this open letter to as many English bee keepers as you are able to do so. Feel free to share the link by email, word of mouth, newsletters or social media and to your local bee keeping organisations. In doing so you will be making a contribution to tackling the problem of colony losses and ensuring that English data is represented as an equal partner in the COLOSS European community.

 

Thanking you

Dr Anthony Williams
 
COLOSS Survey Coordinator for England
De Montfort University
A Member of Leicester and Rutland Beekeepers Association 
 

 

More Information

 

For further information about the COLOSS colony loss core project and past results please see the COLOSS website: here

 

The results paper for 2016-17 can be found here: here

 

 
 

 

BEE MEDICINES AND PHARMACEUTICAL WASTE

 

Just to remind the beekeepers out there that if you use any treatments in your beehives they will be classed as veterinary medicines and as such there are various rules and regulations to follow.  For an article providing details and advice click here.

We are now offering a disposal service for pharmaceutical waste for L&DBKA members. This is available at present during apiary opening hours and is currently free of charge. Please crush your waste (which should not include outer wrappings or boxes, etc. that have not been in contact with the medicines) as much as possible as the disposal service works on volume.

 

Photo of bee with varroa mites from University of Sussex.

 

L&DBKA 2019 AGM was held at 2pm on 9th February

and the Minutes can be accessed here.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) became enforceable on 25th May 2018. It aims to give members of the public control over their personal data held by various organisations. There is no need for members of L&DBKA to take any action as far as their membership of the Association is concerned, but we would ask you to read our policy notice here

For advice on the Asian Hornet see BeeBase and for identification see NNSS website.

We have done our best to attribute copyright to photos used on the website. We apologise for any inadvertent errors. If there are any problems, please get in touch and we will remedy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leiston Beekeepers' Association was invited to 'pop up' at Little Joules in
Aldeburgh on 30 May Bank Holiday Monday to show bees and sell honey.

This was all in support of Joules' special relationship with bees and
beekeeping and 5% of the store's sales from the day will be donated to the
British Beekeepers' Association.

There were lots of interested families and we had a great day.

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