Coming Events

AGM at 6.30pm on 5th November at the Maltsters Arms, Woodbury
Join us for an evening dedicated to beekeeping, knowledge-sharing, and community!

We’ll begin the evening with a warm and welcoming buffet, followed by our AGM—a time to discuss and shape the future of our association together. Your participation and ideas are essential as we continue to support one another and grow our beekeeping community.

Special Talk by Derek Mitchell:
“Trees and Hives: Honey Bees Evolved for Life in Tree Cavities, but We Put Them in Hives”
Derek will lead us through an exploration of the natural adaptations of honey bees to life in tree cavities, contrasting their evolution with the hives we use today. This insightful talk promises to deepen our understanding and inspire fresh perspectives.

Whether you’re a seasoned beekeeper or just beginning your journey, this evening is the perfect opportunity to connect, learn, and celebrate our shared passion.

Mark your calendar, and bring your enthusiasm! We look forward to seeing you there!

RSVP TO CATHY ABOVE. 

We will have a free buffet on the night of our , I will post the menu soon. We are in the outdoor function room, but they have promised big heaters and ceiling heaters so it should be cosy, but also allows anyone worried about viruses to migrate to the outside of the room. At 7pm Derek Mitchell will give us a talk on Bees in Trees and Bees in Boxes, his last talk was very interesting, many members had questions about hive insulation and other things, he ran out of time so this will be a good follow up.

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Dear Beekeepers,

We have finished the season now at the Apiary. The bees are fed and will now go onto the Ivy to fill any spaces they have left.
We are looking forward to next year and new beekeepers joining our fascinating hobby. Beekeeping Training Courses are now up on the website https://exeterbeekeepers.org.uk/coming-events/training/ along with equipment for sale and interesting articles beekeepers have found and sent us.

As usual we are looking for volunteers to help. We have positions on the Exeter BKA Committee, Honiton and Exeter Show Committee and Devon Beekeepers Committee. The Honiton and Exeter Show Committee is only running for half the year too, so not a big commitment. If you would like to know more, shadow someone to see if the post interests you, please let me know. If you would like to stand, please let me know by 4th November, ready for the Exeter Beekeepers AGM.

Do any of you have an issue with Beekeeping that we can raise from Devon to the BBKA for discussion, can you think of any area the British BKA should promote or work on for their members. Let me know as soon as possible and I can send it to the Executive committee to discuss.

We are going to run a session for beekeepers in December, on a weekend, with simple recipes to make a lip balm, face cream and bath float or butter. We will supply extra ingredients and pots to put them in, so you can give gifts to your family for Xmas. There may be a basic cost to cover extras, I will let you know. You may also be asked to bring extra kitchen equipment like jugs and whisks, watch this space. You are welcome to bring your own wax and propolis, we will discuss how to make a basic propolis mix for sore throats etc. I have a bottle of water and propolis as an experiment, it is 8yrs old and still not mouldy, with tap water, I shake it occasionally, it’s a lovely yellow, orange…don’t worry I won’t extend my experiment by giving it to you on the day. You are welcome to bring your own wax or propolis on the day.

There is an exciting project in the pipeline where artists working at Exeter Cathedral want to make 1,000 votives, they will send these to 1,000 groups and individuals to individualise then display. They want Beeswax from Exeter…I am sure many of you have a block you have been sitting on not knowing what to do with it. I shall send you details as I get Caroline, Education Secretary) to tell me more.

Regards, Cathy

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STAR ATTRACTION! PROFESSOR TOM SEELEY  TALK IN JANUARY 2025
Cathy has booked a talk by the world renowned Professor Tom Seeley in January 2025. He will join us from America via a Zoom call. This is a real privilege so don’t miss it! Details of the precise date and joining instructions will be provided nearer to the time.
Tom has provided the description below of the topics that he will be covering.

Bee Talks by Tom Seeley

  1. Five wondrous behaviors of honey bees

Worker honey bees are remarkable creatures.  In this talk I will present five short “stories” about the behavioral skills of these bees.  We will look at how worker honey bees 1) provide directions to important places, 2) rouse sleepy hive mates in the morning, 3) call for help in unloading nectar, 4) request help in grooming their bodies, and 5) prevent mass asphyxiation inside their homes.

  1. Nature-based (Darwinian) beekeeping.

Nature-based beekeeping is an approach to beekeeping that aims to provide managed honey bee colonies with living conditions that are as close as possible to those of free-living honey bee colonies.   The goal is to harmonize our beekeeping methods with the natural history of Apis mellifera, and thus allow the bees to make full use of the toolkit of adaptations that they have evolved over the last 30 million years.  I will review ways in which the living conditions of honey bees differ between free-living and managed colonies.  I will also show how we can pursue beekeeping in a way that is centered less on treating a bee colony as a honey factory and more on nurturing the lives of the bees.  The fundamental question is “What can I give to the bees?” rather than “What can I take from the bees?” 

  1. How a honey bee swarm chooses its home

The bees in a swarm make their choice of their new dwelling place collectively and democratically.  They stake their future on a process that includes collective fact-finding, vigorous debate, and consensus building.  We will look at how these bees evaluate potential nest sites, advertise their discoveries to one another, engage in open deliberation, and choose their new home.  Finally, we will review “The Five Habits of Highly Effective Groups” that are found in honey bee swarms and that can be adopted by human groups to achieve higher collective intelligence.

  1. How a honey bee swarm moves to its chosen home site

We will look at the mystery of how a swarm of bees steers itself to its new home, something that at first glance seems a mind-boggling puzzle.   Somehow, a school  bus-sized cloud of some ten thousand flying insects manages to sweep straight from bivouac site to new dwelling place.  In the past few years, with the introduction of digital video technology, it has become possible to perform the sophisticated data collection and image processing needed to track individual bees in a flying swarm and thus unravel the mechanisms of flight guidance in swarms.

  1. The bee colony as a honey factory

We will explore how a colony of honey bees operates as a factory that produces honey efficiently despite tremendous day-to-day swings in the supply of nectar, the raw material for making honey.  An important feature of the organization of the honey production process is a division of labor between the nectar foragers (elderly workers who toil outside the hive collecting the nectar) and the nectar receivers (middle-age workers who toil inside the hive converting the nectar into honey).   We will see how the nectar foragers can boost their colony’s rate of nectar collecting during a honey flow, using the waggle dance and the shaking signal.  And we will see how these bees can also boost their colony’s rate of nectar processing—to keep the rates of nectar collecting and nectar processing in balance—by means of the tremble dance and stop signal.   I will show videos of nectar foragers producing these signals, each in its own, specific context.

  1. The craft of bee hunting

In this talk, we look at bee hunting—locating wild colonies of honey bees—which is one of the most fascinating games in the world.  We will review the equipment involved and the process of establishing and following beelines, which are lines of bees flying back to their secret homes.  This outdoor activity is one of infinite variety, of suspense, disappointment, perseverance, and triumph.   You go out into the fields.  Before you rises a hillside with ten thousand trees.  One of those trees is a bee tree.  With simple equipment, and special skills, you can find it!  

  1. Colony thirst

Water collection is essential to two parts of the physiology of a honey bee colony:  thermoregulation of the broodnest and nutrition of the larvae.  When overheating of the broodnest threatens on a hot day, a colony must increase its water intake.   And when a colony is rearing brood but is not gathering much nectar, then it must boost its water intake to produce the watery (70-80% water) food for the larvae.  We will look at when and why a colony takes in water and at how a colony’s water-collection specialists precisely start and stop their work as a colony’s need for water rises and falls.

  1. Bait hives: how to get high-quality bees for free

The basic process of capturing honey bee swarms with bait hives is extremely simple.   You just put up a box of the right design in the right location and at the right time of year.   This talk will explain how to capture swarms using bait hives.  If you need additional colonies of bees, this is an efficient, and fun, way to get excellent, locally-adapted bees.

  1. The dance language of honey bees

In this talk, we will look at the zig-zag path of investigation that Karl von Frisch blazed as he deciphered the famous waggle dance of the honey bee.   We will also look at new studies that have recently deepened our understanding of this amazing communication system of the bees. 

  1. The honey bee colony as an information center

Whenever foraging is possible, a honey bee colony must solve the problem of keeping its foragers optimally allocated among the flower patches that its scouts have found.   Flower patches that are large and highly profitable should be allocated many foragers, while those that are small or less profitable should be allocated relatively few foragers.  We will look at how a honey bee colony solves this highly dynamic problem, and we will see that the logic of the solution that they have evolved (the so-called “Honey Bee Algorithm”) is extremely important to human beings as well, for we use the same logic for allocating server computers (analogous to worker bees) among web sites (analogous to flower patches) around the world.

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Winter Evening Meetings:

We are moving our meeting venue. We will be holding the meetings the first Tuesday of the month at 7pm at the Maltsters Arms in Woodbury, EX5 1LN

We’ll be meeting in a heated tent between the car park and the main building
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EBKA Members are welcomed to join meetings held by other Devon Associations. Please contact the relevant Branch Secretary for specific joining details. The schedule of events at other Devon Associations is shown on the DBKA website here.

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SUMMER APIARY MEETINGS – DATES FOR SUMMER
The Apiary Meetings are planned for alternate Sunday mornings at 1030 during the summer.
(Specific days are subject to the vagaries of British weather and activities to the requirements of our bee colonies! So look for emails or check the website a few days before the meeting)
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Every day at Exeter Apiary is a learning day…sometimes as in learning the hard way!

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MP’s to review Insect Decline and Food Security

Following petitions to Parliament on the danger of neonicotinoids to UK pollinators, the Science, Innovation and Technology Commiittee, a cross party group of MPs, has been convened to take evidence on the decline in numbers and diversity of insects and the effect on UK food security. See official announcement here.

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Real concerns are being raised by the BBKA, BDI, and the Science Advisor of the danger of inadvertently importing the Small Hive Beetle if Queens are imported from Northern Ireland. Please see full details in the paper below:

Importing Honey Bees into Great Britain

 

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