LA secretaries and Council meeting

[gavin]

Anyone going tomorrow? Should be fun. There is one controversial motion for the Council meeting to get the adrenaline flowing, a talk on hive monitors, and several interesting topics for the Local association secretaries meeting in the morning.

G.

[EmsE]

I'm going along and looking forward to it, not sure what to expect though.

[kevboab]

Was hoping to go however it clashes with a litter of pups i have to microchip. :-(

[Jimbo]

I am going with Mike and Ben B. Had a late night last night so it better be interesting or I will need a lot of coffee to get me through the day!

[gavin]

LOL! Never heard that excuse before - microchipping puppies.

Jimbo is probably on the way already, snoozing on Ben's shoulder in the back of the car. Ems, these meetings can challenge the sleep-deprived, but there are s few things to hold the attention. See you later I hope.

G.

[Trog]

Lovely to meet EmsE and Jimbo for the first time. Sorry I didn't get a chance to chat, Gavin, but hope you caught my friendly smile in your direction! I thought it was an excellent pair of meetings, though I'm pretty hoarse now from all the chatting! (And it'll be Monday evening before I see my pretty horse ...!)

[Jimbo]

One of the better meetings I have attended. I was particularly interested in Huw Evans talk on the hive monitors that records the sounds. Huw mentioned that they have discovered a difference in sounds from the different subspecies of bees. He did not show any results but I did ask if the Italian bees that the work was done on spoke with an Italian accent and native dark bees spoke with a british accent. Do you think than hybrid bees may be bi-lingual? Perhaps the native bees may have local accents e.g a Glasgow accent or a Dundee accent. The monitoring of bee hive sounds could be compared to morphometry. Anybody got a spare few hundred thousand pounds for a wee research project?

[gavin]

Anybody got a spare few hundred thousand pounds for a wee research project?

Sorry Jimbo, the research funds coffers have been completely emptied by the .... oh, I've said enough about that one, haven't I?! Mike has one if you want to play with it although it did have an odd smell that we were hoping wasn't due to him putting the batteries back the wrong way round.

Saw your smile Trog - thanks - but there were just too many people to speak to for me to wander over. And yes, both Jimbo and Ems are lovely, aren't they?! Do horses get chipped too? And while we're at it, we could chip all candidates for important SBA positions, perhaps with miniature devices similar to Dr Evans' one so that any links to unsavoury organisations can be monitored .... just joking. I know, I shouldn't go there. Sorry.

G.

[kevboab]

Sounds like i missed a good day then. You tell me what you want chipped Gavin and i shall gladly fire a needle into the back of its neck !!!
:-)

[Jimbo]

After hearing the sounds the queens and workers make I wonder if we can respond and speak back to them. I can't find my kazoo but tissue paper and comb might work. What would you want to say to them though?

[gavin]

Dear Dr Doolittle

Don't tell me that you haven't surreptitiously tried the queen piping sound in one of your mating apiaries just to see what happened? The Pied Piper and his rats/children have nothing on the carnage to be seen when a bunch of Apideas all explode into life.

Taking a cue from some comments yesterday I'm now working on a patented method (Monsanto will pay my costs, I'm sure) to empty all Apideas of the non-Amm bees whilst leaving the pure queens behind for successful mating.

There was one thing missing from the talk yesterday. I presume that the whole idea of the hive monitor thing is so that some bright spark like Jimbo can actually talk to them and ask them whether supping from neonic-tainted crops makes them feel dizzy?

Gavin

PS Don't believe everything you read on the internet, and this is the internet after all.

PPS Kev - Don't tempt me!

[EmsE]

I really enjoyed my trip to Saturdays meeting and am glad I made the effort to go. It certainly has given me more of an appreciation as to how the SBA works (still have along way to go though) and Trog, you were right, it is fun to put faces to the names of people we hear about- lovely to meet you.

Huw Evans talk was really interesting with lots of fascinating info, but I kind of feel that being able to use the monitor to let you know that your bees are going to swarm would take a lot of the fascination away. Would be very handy from a disease point of view though.

[Phil McAnespie]

Dear EmsE, As you may see from the number of times I have been on the forum, it is very unusual for me to add comments to various threads. The reason for this is time and not lack of interest. I did see your comments and I thought that I would take the time to say how delighted I am to hear that you enjoyed your day on Saturday. Many people are not really aware of the work done by the SBA and it is good to hear of your interest and appreciation.
These meetings have changed over the years and I believe that they are far more interesting now than ever before. It was unfortunate that we had to cut the discussions short due to lack of time but hopefully we will be able to better that situation next year.
Like you I found Huw Evans' talk very interesting together with the fact of his evident enthusiasm. Sometimes it is easy to try and discredit various forms of research but it may be interesting to see what comes out of it. I believe that we don't accredit nature with the merit it deserves at times and when we do eventually pay attention there are many wonders brought before us. We only have to look at our honeybees in depth to see the marvellous ways they work and communicate with each other.
If humans could try to exist and communicate as well as they do, our world would be a far better place.
I trust that you will continue to attend the various functions which the SBA is involved in and please if you have the time come and speak to me at these meetings.
Very best wishes,
Phil