News

Here are 15 reasons why BIBBA opposes the importation of honey bees and queens

Changes to Subscriptions The committee plan to introduce the following changes:

• The Ordinary membership fee will increase to £25 from 1st April 2020
• Ordinary members paying by Direct Debit (or  Standing Order) will pay a reduced rate of £20
• For Republic of Ireland members, the reduced fee of £20 will be available if paid by PayPal or bank transfer, until Direct Debit subscriptions become available
• The Overseas fee will remain at £25, reduced to £20 if no postal magazine required, until Direct Debit becomes available
• The additional fee for an extra (family) member at the same address will remain at £10
• The fee for a junior member will remain at £10

Reasons for the change The membership fee was last increased in 2008, from £15 to £20.  We would need to increase it to nearly £27 to have the same buying power today. Back in 2012 a committee

The University of Plymouth in partnership with B4 (a community interest company: Bringing Back Black Bees) and funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) have started a 4 year PhD project to investigate suggestions from bee-keepers that different sub-species have a suite of different behaviours and characteristics in comparison to other sub-species, and further that these might be highly regional in their nature. The project will measure these differences, and match those with genetic signatures to confirm the lineage of bees showing different traits. It also aims to identify the parts of the genome that might be under rapid change in these sub-species. While some of the trait differences might be well-established in the bee-keeping community, to date published, robust empirical evidence is lacking. The kinds of traits that we’re interested in gathering data on are, for example, drone brood timings, worker brood cycle, and thriftiness. We will investigate

Strategy Statement BIBBA supports and promotes the sustainable conservation, restoration, study, selection, and improvement of honey bees that are native to the British Isles and Ireland (often referred to as the European Dark Bee or Apis mellifera mellifera).