BIBBA: Supporting Practical Beekeeping The 2023 BIBBA conference will be held in Carmarthen on Saturday 2nd and Sunday 3rd September. To help those travelling a long distance, the facility will be open to attendees from midday Friday 1st September. There will be a wide variety of topics to suit all…
August 2022 BIBBA Monthly
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Sandringham Report 2021
Sandringham Native Bee Project One of BIBBA’s Members, Eric Marshall, approached the Trustees to see if they would support a project to breed and rear native bees. Eric lives close to the Royal Sandringham Estate and it has been a key aim of BIBBA to develop a Special Apiary Project…
NatBIP News No6
This month Jo gives us his musings on long-term bee improvement as well as answering the question, are queen larvae selected by the beekeeper as good as those selected by the bees? Ashbrow school report their successes in queen rearing- if 10year olds can do it, can’t you?
NatBIP News No3
Introduction – Liz Childerley, BIBBA Publicity Officer As we put this NatBIP News edition together, we are forecast near-Mediterranean weather across most parts of the UK, and more importantly for beekeepers, quite a sustained period of warmth over several days. Perhaps these are the right conditions to finally get inside…
Section 5.1 – Queen Rearing Methods
Photo by Roger Patterson Queen Rearing Methods There are so many techniques of queen rearing, and so much has been written about them, that it may seem unwise to add any more. Studying too many methods can be a source of much confusion and leave one overwhelmed and unsure of…
BIBBA Monthly – December 2020
webinars for spring
Is this colony queenless? By Roger Patterson
Queens: Collaboration and how to make it easy on yourself and your bees – by Karl Colyer
Last year, I did several splits including splits of all my favourite breeder colonies in mid-August. It was a slight gamble where I live in Cheshire but the weather was fair and the outlook very similar. Roger mentioned that I was out of action from last September (2 months to get walking, a year to pass a medical to get my driving licence back and lots of mobility issues in between). The rivers around me flooded while I was in hospital and many of my bees and colonies were literally swept away.
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Queens – an example of collaboration between beekeepers, by Roger Patterson
For myself and my local association, Wisborough Green BKA (WGBKA) in West Sussex, where I am Apiary Manager, I usually produce at least 100 queens per year. This is mainly to replace poorer queens in honey producing colonies, provide queens to head nucs for new beekeepers and for members who need queens for a variety of reasons. We try to encourage members to rear their own queens, but sometimes their bees need requeening with better stock. As many beekeepers only have a couple of colonies, they may not have bees that are good to propagate from. A BKA teaching apiary can be a genetic resource to distribute good local stock from.
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Nucs
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