Welcome to BIBBA News for Non-members – June 2020

CHAIR’S WELCOME
After the glorious May weather, many of us were wondering when the rain and cooler weather would come. Well, I guess we need to be careful what we wish for!
In this June issue you will be able to:
- keep up to date with NatBIP strategy
- be aware of some DNA research
- see what you can do with a nuc box
- learn about some BIBBA webinars
BIBBA TAKES PART IN A WEBINAR
The stay-at-home initiative from the government has put paid to bee conferences, training courses, apiary visits and local meetings. The BIBBA team has dragged itself (kicking and screaming) into the 21st Century by participating in its first webinar.
Nick Mawby hosted the webinar that started off with a live (10 minute) apiary inspection of a nuc that was split three weeks earlier as a swarm prevention measure. It was great to watch a beekeeper doing the inspection in real time.
Roger Patterson then gave a fascinating presentation and chat called “Keep Your swarms to Yourself”. As well as mentioning the need for swarm prevention, Roger went into the triggers for swarming, control actions and some sensible tips to not be wrong-footed with swarms from your colonies. He also mentioned some of the triggers that are induced by the beekeeper!
The final 10 minutes were interactive Q’s & A’s from the webinar attendees.
Overall, it was felt to be both interesting and useful, with good positive feedback. Roger is planning a series of webinars at two levels to suit both the less experienced and more experienced beekeepers amongst us.
If you have an interesting idea for a webinar, no matter how long, let us know on the feedback form please. If the topic isn’t long enough for a session, several can be put together.
WEBINAR EVENTS
A webinar is a live presentation, discussion or interview to talk about a beekeeping subject or specialism. Roger Patterson has kindly offered six webinars for you over the coming few weeks. These events are free to BIBBA members.
Which webinar is for you?
Beekeepers learn at very different rates, so it is difficult to advise which one to attend. The Early Years assumes that attendees have their own bees and can manage them reasonably efficiently. Intermediate/advanced is aimed at attendees who have successfully overwintered bees at least twice.
There may be a little overlapping of topics, but no repetition of content, so beekeepers can attend both levels if they wish, as there is always something to learn.
How to attend the webinar
These are free to attend and you do not need to register or use a password; just click the relevant link to zoom.
If you complete this form we will send you login details, reminders and any updates and follow ups:
http://eepurl.com/g6_xvT
NATIONAL BEE IMPROVEMENT PROGRAMME (NatBIP)
Bee Improvement for All

Perhaps the biggest stumbling block to improving the quality and consistency of our bees is getting beekeepers to agree on a collective way forward. Although there may be differences of opinion as to which is the best type of bee, if we look at the qualities we want in our bees, it may be surprising how much agreement there can be.
Most people want hardy, docile and productive bees.
How best to achieve this may cause further disagreement amongst beekeepers.
The mating system of the honey bee, namely the queen mating with multiple drones from several miles radius, has always made improving the quality of our bees a bit problematic. Whilst some beekeepers get around this problem through instrumental insemination, it is never likely to be a ‘mass-market’ technique. This has led to many beekeepers turning to queens reared abroad to get around the issues of inconsistent results.
A queen reared abroad, in the early part of the season, can be introduced to a nucleus in this country to produce a colony that is unlikely to swarm in the same season. This is a system which has gained popularity over the years to the point where imported queen volumes have grown year on year to the present figure of about 22,000 imports per season.
22,000 queens imported per season
Unfortunately, imported queens have a drastic effect on our local bee populations, hybridising the different sub-species of honey bee and making the selection and improvement of our bees more difficult. This random hybridisation means that consistency in improvement programmes is difficult to achieve, with offspring not reliably inheriting the qualities of their parents. The result of importation of honey bees is a poorer quality, hybridised or mongrelised local population. This in turn, fuels the demand for further imports to improve quality.
Some may consider that the added genetic material from imports is an advantage, giving us a more genetically diverse bee population. Genetic diversity is, of course, an important quality in a population, making it resilient and able to withstand a wide range of threats. However, the introduction of maladjusted, or unsuitable, genes, as the SMARTBEES project pointed out, only weakens a population rather than strengthens it.
the mean survival duration of local bee origins was significantly longer than that of foreign ones
American Bee Journal
This system, such as it is, relying on imports for our quality, is what has been considered, by many, as the norm, for decades. It is not a system that has served us well; the evidence is all around us, with bad-tempered, unproductive and swarmy bees being only too common. If we are ever to change our beekeeping for the better, to a more sustainable system, and not relying on outside sources for a tolerable bee, we have got to find a new approach, and unite to achieve that approach.
The time is right for a new approach
As the world population continues to grow, bees and beekeepers assume greater importance for their role in the pollination of crops, than they have ever held. In the natural world, honey bees help to maintain biodiversity in the environment helping plants to set seed for their own benefit and for the creatures that feed on them.
For bees and beekeepers to continue to provide this service in a crowded world, we must develop a sustainable system that produces a docile, robust, and productive bee. It is time to take a fresh look at our beekeeping and commit to a method that produces a better bee for everyone. This will ensure that, in the years to come, we rise to the challenge of maintaining a healthy population that serves the beekeeper, the food producer and the environment well.
Many beekeepers regard the quality of hybrid vigour as an important attribute that produces better performance in bee colonies. It is a well-known technique in plant and animal husbandry producing reliable results which can easily be replicated. Unfortunately, in honey bees, where queens mate with multiple drones from a wide area, control of the resulting population is quickly compromised and we end up with a random genetic mix, making selection and improvement extremely difficult.
Many beekeepers will recognise the scenario of buying in bees of good temper only for things to deteriorate after a generation or two, making further imports necessary. Others, who do not bring in stock, will recognise how the temper of their own stock can deteriorate after neighbours bring in bees of other sub-species. A choice needs to be made between continuing with ever-increasing imports, which ultimately merely seems to add to the problem, or turning our back on imports and making the most of what we have got here already.
where queens mate with multiple drones from a wide area ….
we end up with a random genetic mix, making selection and improvement extremely difficult
Reaching agreement
The biggest obstacle to improving our own bees long-term is the importation of foreign sub-species due to the constant influx of unsuitable and incompatible genes into our bee population. There is some evidence, from various surveys carried out in the last few years that most beekeepers do not favour imports and are aware of the biosecurity risks involved. Many realise that they are a short-term fix that causes longer-term problems. This is where we can find the common ground to unite beekeepers and build a better future for beekeeping in this country.
Once we turn our back on imported stock, that is, bees of non-native sub-species, we stop adding to the problem. Although our bee population may currently be a very hybridised mixture of sub-species, without imports we can start on the road to refining and improving them through a process of natural and artificial selection.
There is a great deal of genetic diversity in the bees already here which will allow us to develop whatever qualities we would like to see in our bees. In some ways there is too much diversity, the population is very hybridised making it difficult to get them to breed true (offspring resembling parents) but these challenges can be overcome.
Maximum Participation
For the National Bee Improvement Programme to achieve success we need to achieve maximum participation from beekeepers. The first rung on the ladder, which beekeepers can unite around, is to commit to not buying imported bees, or offspring of recently imported bees. Only by making this commitment to source home-grown queens can our current bee population develop into a more coherent and useful resource through the processes of natural and artificial selection. A big reduction in the number of imports is the first step to transforming our honey bee population.
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the full article on nucs is available to BIBBA members at bibba.com/nucs
Beekeepers wanted!

Victoria Buswell (pictured) is asking for BIBBA members to take part in a national DNA sampling exercise during 2020. Please note – this dovetails wonderfully in with the NatBIP strategy to increase the native been DNA. Vicotria’s note reads….
Help the University of Plymouth investigate honeybees across the British Isles. Are you a beekeeper in the British Isles? Do you know of or possess native bees or apiaries that have been managed without significant imports for some time? If so, the University of Plymouth would love to hear from you.
Scientists at the University of Plymouth are aiming to assess the degree of native subspecies, Apis mellifera mellifera, in our British Isles honeybee populations. While previous studies have uncovered native and near native honeybees in the South West, the Inner Hebrides and Ireland, this study aims to uncover any pockets of native bees that are currently unknown and to assess the extent of A.m.mellifera in the wider British populations. This study will give us a snapshot of the current abundance of native honeybees across the British Isles now while providing the beekeeping and scientific community with a starting point and data to refer back to in order to monitor any changes.
This study will use whole genome sequencing. This means that the experiment will examine the entire DNA that codes for the behaviour, appearance and characteristics of that colony. In order to achieve this, the study requires 40 individual honeybees per colony. We will send you a kit to collect your bees and will just ask you some very simple questions about your colony.
BIBBA members will be sent information on how to take part.
FROM THE ARCHIVES
BIBBA is considering a new, regular section for each BM. Philip Denwood has created a digital archive which includes most of the BIBBA and even VBBA (Village Bee Breeder’s Association) newsletters. The library extends back in time over 50+ years!
This month’s example is a link to the two sides of the Village Bee Breeders Association newsletter for March 1970, around 50 years ago.
BEEKEEPING SURVEY
HUSBANDRY RESEARCH
Adam Bourne is a Master’s student at Imperial College London and part of his Master’s project focusses on how different husbandry practices are actually applied by beekeepers in practical settings. He has created a short survey for beekeepers to identify what techniques are being used, and what factors beekeepers consider the biggest threats to the health of their bees.
Click the this link for the quick (5-10 minutes) survey, which is completely anonymous. No personal information from any participants will be required.
OLD BOOKS
Another idea to keep you all reading and learning about bees is to offer a regular download of old books. Like the scanned document in the From the Archives article, the quality of the scanning is very variable and the original book may have been in relatively poor condition when it was scanned.
This month’s example is Beekeeping by Twentieth Century Methods by J. Hand, written in 1911.
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