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:   Bee Sting Allergy Survey

 Panic in the Beehive

Kylie snaps up world's most expensive honey - on sale at £42 a pot at Harrods   6.1.08
Honey thought to be the world's most expensive at £42 per pot has gone on sale at Harrods.
It is being sold in the store's pharmacy instead of its food hall because of the honey's apparent health benefits.
The 120g pots of Life Mel honey are popular with celebrities such as Sienna Miller and Kylie Minogue, Harrods said.
Life Mel has a high price tag because it is made by honey bees fed on a specially created diet which includes herbs such as Siberian ginseng and echinacea.
It has a strong taste similar to manuka honey and is made without artificial ingredients.
Harrods press and product manager Andre Dang said the honey was sold in the Harrods' Farmacia because it was used as a health product.
"This is the newest product that has just launched.
"People are tending to use it more as an alternative therapy rather than spreading it on toast," he said.
The honey, which is made in Israel, is meant to be eaten by the teaspoonful in the morning and at night.
Daily Mail 

   

In a laboratory in the heart of the east end of London, an unmistakeable buzz fills the air.

The small room is packed with bumblebees - hundreds upon hundreds of them going about their business in small wooden hives.
Despite their scientific setting, the insects look just the same as bumblebees found in the wild, apart from one small - really small - difference.

Most are adorned with minuscule silver tags, so tiny that at first they are hard to see. But every so often, as they catch the laboratory lights, they glint and sparkle, standing out from the bees' fuzzy bodies.
These tiny accessories are Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags - the same technology used to track stock in warehouses or supermarkets or employed for transport systems such as the Oyster Card payment scheme used on the London Underground. They have been fitted to the bees by scientists at Queen Mary, University of London (QMUL), who want to keep track of the animals' whereabouts so as to better understand these brainy bugs.

Honey Makes 'Comeback' as Natural Disease Fighter   6.1.08
Amid growing concern over drug-resistant superbugs and nonhealing wounds that endanger diabetes patients, nature's original antibiotic — honey — is making a comeback.

More than 4,000 years after Egyptians began applying honey to wounds, Derma Sciences Inc., a New Jersey company that makes medicated and other advanced wound care products, began selling the first honey-based dressing this fall after it was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Called Medihoney, it is made from a highly absorbent seaweed-based material, saturated with manuka honey, a particularly potent type that experts say kills germs and speeds healing. Also called Leptospermum honey, manuka honey comes from hives of bees that collect nectar from manuka and jelly bushes in Australia and New Zealand.