Thursday April 17th. Maulden Church Hall. Talk by Peter Tomkins on 'Colony Compromise Disorder'.  The talk starts at 1930 hours.

Saturday 26th April. Equipment Building Day at Forestry Commission Hut, Clophill. This is an opportunity to bring along any equipment that you need to repair, plus we also have a number of supers/roofs/floors etc for the Turvey Apiary that need building up - any help gratefully accepted otherwise Danny's going to be very busy over the next few months! We have the hut from 10.30, bring your own lunch if you want to stay all day. 

Directions – take the A6 north from Clophill village.  After about 1.5km you will come to a lay-by (Deadman’s Hill of James Hanratty fame).  Just past the exit from this lay-by there is a small lane off to the left – take this.  From the north (Bedford) you can turn right with great care if you pull on to the cross-hatching at the beginning of the dual carriageway.  If you miss the turn then you have to go down into Clophill, round the roundabout and approach from the south.  Once you’re in the lane then you go past the Greensand offices (postcode: MK45 3QT) and after about 200m you will come to the barn.  There will be signs out.

A note received by Ian Beaty asking for it to be circulated around all Beekeeping associations:

If you can in any way put this out to as many people as possible I would appreciate it. John Atkinson died on Friday 28th March. He was a long time contributor for The Beekeepers Quarterly and a world figure in his writings based on his knowledge of bee breeding The funeral is at Bury St Edmunds Crematorium on Friday 11th April at 3.00.  Jeremy Burbidge

 Charity Registration No. 294005
Web Site: www.bedfordshirebeekeepers.org.uk

In this newsletter:
Page 2        Stop Press, Editor’s Notes, Future Programme, Forthcoming Events.
Page 3        Training (Beginners Courses, BBKA Basic Exam, Queen Rearing Day);
Pages 4/5    Apiary Tips (Swarm Receivers, Ged Marshall Queens); Items of Interest (Life Miel, BBKA Sting Survey, Bees at Rothamstead);
Page 6        For Sale/Wanted; North Bucks events. 
The Association welcomes copy (in any format) for the newsletters. The next newsletter will be published in March 2008. The closing date for copy is 30 April 2008. 

Stop Press
1. 2008 Subs are now due. The membership form is attached, and needs to be returned to Fiona Cook as soon as possible. Membership rates are unchanged from 2007.

2. Next Beds BKA Talk is ‘Swarming’ by Brian Dennis. Maulden Church Hall, Thursday 27^th March 2008.

 Editors Notes

Thank you to everyone who attended/manned stands/presented/prepared lunch and refreshments at the Annual General Meeting in February. It was a very successful day. The Trading stand had a record year. The second hand stall took over £200 and the raffle raised £125 which has been donated to ‘Bees Abroad’ who were represented at the meeting by Claire Waring. Thank you also everyone who brought along wax for the exchange scheme – we had over 400lb on the day which covers a lot of wax purchases this year.

We were all pleased to see Jenny Ellison and the Thorne’s stand again – and a great thank you to Andy Johnston for helping Jenny to pull it together. Jenny has confirmed that she is keeping on with the Thorne’s agency, Andy will be helping her by manning it Fridays 1900 to 2100 and Saturdays 0900 to 1300.  She will not be holding lots of stock like Lew did, but things will have to be ordered in advance – preferably by email and then wait until you are notified that it has arrived. Jenny’s email is ellisonlewjen@aol.com.

 There was one change to the committee voted in on Monday 10^th March. Cliff Herring has resigned as District Advisor for the Leighton Buzzard district. Andrew Beer has been voted as Advisor in his place. Many thanks Cliff for your time in this role.

Future Programme
Thursday 27^th March 2008. Maulden Church Hall. Talk by Brian Dennis on ‘Swarming’. Start time is 1930 hours.
Thursday 17^th April. Maulden Church Hall. Talk by Peter Tomkins on ‘Colony Collapse Disorder’. Start time is 1930 hours.
Saturday 19^th/Sunday 20^th April. British Beekeepers Association Spring Convention, Stoneleigh, Warwickshire. Trading stands are open on Saturday 19^th.
Saturday 26^th April. Beginners and any other members are welcome to come along to a ‘Hive Equipment Building’ day in Clophill. We will be using a Forestry Commission site hut as the base. Bring warm clothing and your own lunch if you want to stay all day.   10.30am start. We’ll be building Supers mainly for the Stockwood and Turvey apiaries, but if you want to bring along anything else, or need a place/advice on how to make repairs, you are more than welcome to bring them along too.

Members Open Days: 24^th May – Andy Johnston. 14^th June – Andrew Beer. July (date tbc) – Paul Rubens. More details will be sent for locations etc nearer the time.

Beds BKA at local Shows:  The association are going to be represented at the following events. Please come along and support us. If you would like to help man the stand, please contact the organiser for each event:

Bedfordshire Food Fair, Shuttleworth (Wally Thrale), 5/6 April 08.
Bedfordshire County Show, Shuttleworth (Ray Smith), July 08
Woodworks! Marston Vale Millenium Park (Wally Thrale) 6/7 September 08.

 Beds BKA Honey Show. The date is Saturday 4^th October, location to be confirmed.

National Honey Show. Date and Location change from previous years – Thursday 30th October until Saturday 1st November. Georges College, Addlestone, Nr Weybridge.

Training

Beginners Courses
The 6 week beginners course started on Thursday 6^th March, Priory Park, Bedford. There has been lot of interest in beginners courses this year, and so another 1 day course may be held in September. If you are interested, or know someone who is, please register your interest with Harry Inman on 01234 306554 or harreb@ntlworld.com or Gillian Sentinella on 01582 721848 or Gillian_sentinella@hotmail.com.

BBKA Basic Exam. I have been thinking that I should upgrade my skills now that I’ve had a couple of years practical experience. We have two BBKA Basic Examiners in Bedfordshire, and I am looking to get a group together who would like to take the Basic course this year. You must have been keeping bees for at least a year to qualify. If you are interested in doing this course, please let me know and I will talk to the examiners plus Stockwood Apiarists to work out the best way.

 Saturday 28^th June. ‘Queen Rearing’ Course organised by Wally Thrale. Terry Clare from BIBBA will be running the course. This will be held at the Turvey Apiary. The cost is £5 per person, bring your own lunch. There are a few placed left so please contact Wally ASAP if you would like to take part. There is a write up about a similar course in the January Beecraft.

 Apiary Tips
I picked up a good tip at the Cambs BKA talk on 8^th March. Use different coloured map pins to reprensent the age of the queen on each hive, a very easy way to work out which ones may be at risk of swarming/need replacement.

We’re almost into swarming season. Ian Beaty is the Bedfordshire Swarm co-ordinator. The names of launchpad people will be released in a few weeks time who will need swarms. If you would like to be on the list, please contact Ian direct with your name, contact number (Home and mobile if possible), and when you are available to collect/receive swarms (All time, Evenings/Weekends, Weekends only etc). Ian can be contacted on 01234 750635 or ian.beaty@btinternet.com.

Ordering of Queens from Ged Marshall
Wally Thrale has reported that whilst the initial order has been placed with Ged, another order can be sent for supply later in the year. Contact Wally on 01767 225846.   email: w.thrale@ntlworld.com if you are interested.

 Items of Interest - (read more of these on our new "news item" website page. deleted here to save space.)

“Life Miel”. Ian Beaty shared at the AGM the effect this product is having on his White Cell count. From January 08 his readings were 14, 25, 48, 113, 161,165, 152 (normal counts are usually 150+). We wish him continued progress. This article was found on the Thorne’s web site.

 Beds BKA Chris Rose found out more background information, which can be procured in Milton Keynes and sent it to myself and Ian.
“I was fascinated to hear your story about Life Mel Honey, and amazed to get home and open my copy of Bee Craft to read more about it so I was intrigued to find out how it is made and why it should have the effect it does.
The bees are fed, and do not forage.  What makes life Mel special is the food that is prepared for the bees, which incredibly comprises 30% whole blood.  The blood is avian or mammal, including out of date human blood, and is homogenised or lysed to break down the cell membranes and release cellular constituents.  The blood is  filtered, dried and ground to powder.  The blood is then mixed with a base comprising normal sugar solution, and plant extract based on Chinese herbal remedies.  
Full details about the food for the bees and the production of the honey are in the patent application filed with WIPO - http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?wo=2006080019&IA=WO2006080019&DISPLAY=STATUS

Life Mel was developed by a small Israeli company employing about 6 people with the specific objective of improving the health of blood following chemotherapy.  They have run a limited clinical trial in Israel with positive results.(See http://www.holywell-health.com/img/news/Lifemeltrial2006.pdf)
Life-Mel is available in the UK online from www.lifemel.co.uk at £40 per jar if you don’t  fancy a trip to MK.  It is £30 per jar directly from Israel but shipping will cost you £12 !”.

 “Kylie snaps up world's most expensive honey - on sale at £42 a pot at Harrods   6.1.08 Daily Mail

 BBKA – Bee Sting Survey . I picked this article up on the BBKA Website this week. All Beekeepers are being asked to contribute to it whether stings affect you or not.

"Can we sting you for some help?
All UK beekeepers are invited to take part in a nationwide survey. Doctors at Birmingham Heartlands Hospital have designed an easy to complete web based questionnaire to establish, for the first time, how common bee venom allergy is in the UK beekeeping community and how historically it has been managed. The survey takes 5-7 minutes to complete and the link that appears at the end of this paragraph will take you straight to the survey.

If you would like more information about bee venom allergy the next BBKA news has an article with all the ins and outs of this often frustrating problem for some beekeepers. Thank you all in advance for agreeing to take part in this bee venom survey, your responses are greatly valued and time appreciated.

Please use this link to reach the survey
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=Mkt8DSLKAIxpSvwKOFrBfg_3d_3d
Dr A Richter and Dr MT Krishna, Department of Immunology and Allergy, Birmingham Heartlands Hospital"

 Bees at Rothamsted
One of our members (Andrew Martin) works at Rothamstead Research Station in Harpenden. I asked if he would write us a short article on their work with bees – and here it is. Thanks Andrew!

 “Rothamsted Research in Harpenden was established in 1843 and is the world’s oldest agricultural research station. There has been work on bees continuously since 1923, and despite some funding cuts and the loss of some key personnel in recent years, work on bees and pollination continues as a major area of interest. 

Pollination Ecology
The pollination ecology group is working on two main projects funded by the BBSRC (see below). The first is a joint project with the universities of Stirling and Newcastle studying the effects of mass flowering crops both on the pollination of wild flowers and on the populations of bumblebees in arable farmland. The second is a project using harmonic radar to track butterflies as part of an investigation into their use of visual and odour cues to find forage flowers. We have already used the radar successfully to track honeybees and bumblebees. We have also been doing experiments in a flight room on honeybees’ responses to visual and odour cues associated with pollen. There are also two PhD projects, one is studying the dependence on insects of hedgerow plants for pollination and subsequent fruit set, which provides winter food for many bird species. The other investigates the pollination of wild plants both in the margins and within the crops in arable fields. 

Pathology
Funding is still being sought to continue work on fungal pathogens for Varroa destructor, which could lead to the development of a marketable product. This would be a welcome alternative to the chemical control methods to which mites are becoming resistant. A new PhD project is currently being advertised, with the title “The effect of pathogens on honey bee learning and foraging behaviour”. In this project, the learning and foraging efficiency of infected and healthy colonies will be compared and impacts on pollination effectiveness and colony survival evaluated.  Molecular techniques will be combined with behavioural studies ranging from monitoring bees in observation hives and the flight room to field experiments using the harmonic radar.

Funding
Rothamsted receives funds for research from the BBSRC (Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council of the UK) and through competitions and contracts from Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), the European Union, from Levy boards, commercial and other organisations. The support of the bee research programme in recent years by grants from the British Beekeepers Association and the C. B. Dennis British Beekeepers Research Trust is gratefully acknowledged. All of us* involved in bee work at Rothamsted are especially grateful for a recent grant from the Beds Beekeepers Association, which is enabling us to update our honeybee hives and beekeeping equipment, and to have a stand at the Spring BBKA convention at Stoneleigh.

 * Dr. Juliet Osborne, Alan Smith, John Cussans, Andrew Martin, Jenny Swain, Jenny Jacobs, Penny Fletcher, Dr. Judy Pell, Dr. Samantha Cook”.

For Sale/Wanted
For Sale: Sioux Sterne has 3 x 30l buckets of honey for sale at £45 each. Please contact her on 01582 519346 (Luton area).
Wanted: Michael Bunyan (2007 Beginner) is setting up with bees for the first time, and is on the lookout for a swarm of bees. Please contact him on 01234 76864 if you can help.

North Bucks Events
Ken Gorman is sending me the North Bucks Beekeepers newsletters so that I can share any forthcoming events. Unfortunately because I’m slightly late publishing this month, their March ‘Monthly Get Together’ has been and gone. However, if you do live on the Bucks side of the county and are interested in attending their events, please contact Ken on 01908 560610 and he will let you know what’s going on.

Bedfordshire Beekeepers Website
http://www.bedfordshirebeekeepers.org.uk/
Just a reminder that this web site is for your benefit as well as members of the public. If you would like to see anything particular on there, or have articles/pictures you would like published please send them to me.