A few photos from the meeting last Tuesday
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A few photos from the meeting last Tuesday
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One more
There's one of them looks familiar but I can't put a name to him....;)
We should never have had so many forum posters in the one place - what if some disaster befell the place?! 'twas Tuesday, on Wednesday we were peering into bee hives in the rain :p. I remember Tuesday well, it was the day after Monday.
Don't get too excited, dear reader, it was a planning meeting and the real action is yet to come.
Aye I go for the timeless look Jon! Me and Coco Chanel? We're like that...(mimes with crossed fingers that the said Coco and he are very similar)
Gavin was showing us his field of antenna at this point I reckon.
We should register on this network and fill out the survey...obviously I have involvement with this project so maybe Gav or another SNHBS member could do it ? Jon is your group in NI in this network ?
http://www.smartbees-fp7.eu/Extension/cons-network/
Done
Hi Gavin your in box is full :)
Hi All - seems like this is gathering pace ;)
http://www.snhbs.scot/booking-and-membership-details/
Conference on here this weekend, will attend to seee how native my bees are.
http://nihbs.org/wp-content/uploads/...oneybee-AD.pdf
START UP DAY for the new Scottish Native Honey Bee Society ... 1 April in Perth ... all welcome ... see you there?
See our website for details and booking: http://www.snhbs.scot
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Indeed it is green gumbo. See you there?
Hopefully more native than the Cornish ones that have a good French ancestry and come between 50-80% "pure". I think pure is being used as a relative term.
http://www.b4project.co.uk/the-four-...pg-2-page-001/
So good luck and hopefully you won't resort to the Irish tactic of shotgunning hives that contain "alien" bees or so the rumours say.
[QUOTE=So good luck and hopefully you won't resort to the Irish tactic of shotgunning hives that contain "alien" bees or so the rumours say.[/QUOTE]
Never heard that so it must be a rumour?????????????????
things look positive for my colonies.
You could change your forum id to 12_Gauge the Alien Hunter GG
Fields are always greener on the far side, that's because your not tending your own patch.
https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news...nds-honey-bee/
Come along on 1st April ! No joke !
I hope yea are not going to set up an Apiary dedicated to Native Scottish honey bees. They tried that in Ireland in 2014 and this is what they had to get around. I dont know how many died in the stampedes.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland...es-255305.html
We promise not to set up apiaries beside cliffs with lots of cattle innocently wandering about!
Somewhat grateful that the dozens of pictures the photographer took of me kneeling, leaning, standing over bee hives didn't make it to print. I can imagine Kirsty's reaction when the photographer returned with his SD card stuffed with images: 'He looks like *that*?!!"
At the behest of the photographer, Angus, and in some warm sunshine and still air, I lifted the first frames of the season in one colony. Turned out to be a drone layer.
There is one MiniPlus overwintering on that site, 5 frames of bees, three with brood, lots of food and the queen wandering about wondering where to put an egg next. Like a good number of my full-sized poly hives they are likely to be straight into a second box in March sometime at this rate. Some of the poly hives are full boxes of bees right now and the Amm ones mated at our isolated site are the strongest. Just sayin'. They can be as vigorous (and hopefully as productive) as anything from the C lineage as long as they are not inbred. Will post some pictures soon.
If you are not going to be in Europe you will not be subject to European import laws relating to bees, :o therefore you could have a ban on imports.
That's true but I think you will find post Brexit that the UK will be lowering the bar on most issues rather than raising it.
A lot of regulations will likely disappear for better or for worse, probably for worse.
When I was looking up something different I came across this site not everybody is happy to see Amms, I assume you will have similar problems in Scotland.
http://www.beekeeping.ie/html/open_letter.html
No surprise there then.
PH
Good luck to all involved with the organisation of the inaugural meeting tomorrow.
Coverage on the Beeb today ...
Looking forward to the launch tomorrow :D
PS Disappointed by the small size of Scottish honey bee colonies ... only 10,000 according to the figure legend on the BBC.
Gavin on the BBC iplayer scroll to 19:20 you'll need to be quick it expires 2pm 1/4/17.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...-news-31032017
Here's a new link. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-39466380
How did your meeting go I am just curious. Was there enthusiasm for setting it up and were there any objections.
I am sure a larger report will be posted here soon but in the meantime....
Membership stands at about 105 so far and 75 of them made the trip to the launch day :)
It went really well and I think it was a great start for the fledgling society. I was actually surprised at the consensus and the level of commitment of folk attending. I think the biggest disagreement was if "chair" or "president" is the better title !
Lots of skillful beekeepers and queen rearing chat as well and a fantastic series of talks including by Director of Science at the RZSS, Iain Valentine, comparing bees with panda conservation.
All in all a good start - some lovely letters of support from BIBBA, NIHBS, Morna Stoakley and member 101 - Prof Tom Seeley !
Well done that means there will probably be lots of chatter on here. I know Jon is on here from NIHBS but there is no forum on line that I am aware of where people gossip about beekeeping over here. Except for Facebook but its not great for sensible info.
I think that we've simply been too busy for much chatter yet, and there has been a need for quite a bit of private chatter too. Plus perhaps a reticence to use an SBA forum for the business of a non-SBA (but SBA-friendly) society.
However, GG (other GG) was right. It went very well. Loads of interest, great enthusiasm, just the right attitude. The collaborative decision making seemed to go OK, we have an excellent young volunteer to be secretary, and the speakers were excellent. Shouldn't be long now until we get the barriers put up and can force everyone to keep only Amm (just a wee tease there for C4U ....). No, there was a mature attitude to these issues expressed from the floor and no-one arguing against. The big issues are the availability of stock, locating the remaining (genetically) unpolluted reservoirs of native bee genetics, agreeing just what constitutes a native honey bee (and whether we have to call them Black Bees), and, most importantly of all, as GG said, whether the corpulent guy with the bow tie should be called President or Chair.
As far as Irish bee babbles goes, other than Facebook the (Yahoo) Irish List was one of the better ones in its day but it has fallen into disuse.
Here are a couple of pics from Ewan's Twitter feed, https://twitter.com/snhbsociety
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8UbTpzXsAEsoFS.jpg:large
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8Ut8q6XcAEzbj1.jpg
Would it be too overly gushing to say I found the launch day of SNHBS inspiring?! Ach well who cares?! To have 70+ enthusiasts in a room (of an initial 100+ membership) with a common aim to do something positive was a beautiful thing. It's long been my dream that we could create such an organisation in Scotland and now we've done it. I say we but I was more involved at the initial idea stage and the real work was done by Gavin, Jeff, Kate, Ewan, Emma etc etc. Many thanks guys.
The day was a great opportunity for networking as well and it looks like a wee group of AMM enthusiasts (including myself) are going to be doing some practical work together here in Strathspey/Speyside.
Hopefully the start of great things!
Inspiring yes.
I wonder how many on here have worked with Carniolians?
I ask as for the last ten years or so it has been my bee of choice and a pure delight to work with. Smoker fuel? Not got any and not used it for years. Honey? Best crop 230 lbs from a double brood Nat. Err.... comb honey that is.... So.
The above is the result of careful breeding and I will take the bull by the horns and say due to Hitler the breeding started as I have been told in the past. Something that is usually glossed over but hey facts are awkward things if indeed that is true.
If we could breed an Amm to that quality would that not be a wonderful thing?
I was wondering during one of the presentations could we not do a lot with eggs? Saves a lot of faffing around??????????????????????
Further there is now a need for a forum on the society site so that people and groups can communicate with out abusing the hospitality of here and else where. Also FB is very useful at times. And Free....!!!
PH
I think one of the points of the whole exercise for me PH will be that we can finally give the breeding attention to AMM that other strains have already had applied to them for a long time. I see no reason why in time we won't be able to have AMMs as good as we all want. It just needs the concerted effort to be put in and for us all to be pulling in the same direction. I'm not naive enough to think it's going to be easy or simple but we have to make a start somewhere and I think last Saturday was that.
"Putting my money where my mouth is" has led to the beginnings of our wee group here in Strathspey/Speyside. Not sure I'd have the time to support a dedicated forum for SNHBS. The FB group has a bit of activity and hopefully we'll be allowed to continue on here.
Re eggs - the only time I had eggs posted to me was a disaster. No larvae hatched. No reason we couldn't be sending virgin queens around the country for the cost of postage as there's not a massive amount of work in producing them. But then we have the mish mash drone population to worry about. Andrew has some keen observations re apiary vicinity mating which are very interesting. Is it something you came across much with Bernard's colonies?
Early morning syndrome here. Sorry not sure what the question is?
PH
You're definitely right about that. The biggest issue will be getting a seriously talented bee breeder to work on the matter alongside the multitude of groups which are now becoming established. I may be treading on thin ice here (might even have to change my user name to itld as it feels a bit like doing just that!!! :) ) but I think that there's a huge difference between the early days of establishing self sustaining Amm populations and actually breeding lines of bees which are on a par with the German/Austrian carnica or some of the buckfast lines.