MARCH 1994 Lupin Farm (Car share) Meon Valley Beekeepers are holding their usual spring auction of beekeeping equipment and bees at Lupin Farm, Colemore, near Alton on Saturday April 30th at 1.00 p.m. Viewing is from 11:30 a.m. on the day of sale only. Items for inclusion in the sale are now welcome -- the first 350 lots accepted and should be delivered on the morning of the sale only between 8:30 and 11:30 a.m. Catalogues printed 5th April, will be available at the ground or can be ordered by sending 40p and an A4 SAE. Commission on sales is 10%, minimum 50p per lot entered. Information and catalogues from Jack Pugh, Arbour Cottage, Upham, Southampton, SO3 1JA (0489)-860600 To get to Lupin Farm go about 6 miles south of Alton on the A32 and turn left at the Ropley/Steep junction towards Steep. Lupin farm is on the left hand side of the Steep road. Car sharing may be feasible, Call Gordon Scott (0256)-476547 to get other names if you can offer a lift or would like one. After Apiary teas We would like to increase the social side of our monthly practical meetings at the Association Apiary. After meetings we plan to have tea/coffee 'drop-in's at the home of a member. June and Norman Hughes have 'started the ball rolling' by inviting us to 103 Coniston Road on 12th March and 11th June, but we would like to extend this to other days throughout the year. Are you are prepared to host a chinwag? If so, please call June (0256-464280) to arrange a date, or maybe just invite us on the day if there isn't one already arranged! Stoneleigh (car share) The BKA Spring Convention at Stoneleigh is on the 23rd April this year (9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.). Tickets ar œ5 on the day or œ4 in advance from Mrs. Betty Showler, Riverside, Newport Street, Hay-on-Wye, Hereford HR3 5BG (0497-820386). (Nice town Hay-on-Wye, go there sometime if you've never been, visit Karl & Betty's bookshop!). If you would like to car share, either as a passenger or a driver, please give me (Gordon) a ring and I shall try to get people together. Sue and I will be there, but we are having a long weekend away (Sue's birthday, Stoneleigh, Shakespeare's Birthday, last night of Macbeth at Stratford...) Vyne Picnic Once again we are planning a picnic at the National Trust's open-air events at the Vyne. Sue and I will be at the Traditional Jazz Concert on Saturday June 11th (Kenny Baker, Don Lusher, Jack Parnell), tickets œ8.50 from the Vyne). We'll also be at the classical & fireworks concert on Saturday July 23rd (œ10 ditto) and we would love you to join us there. If you haven't been to one of these events, you really have missed something -- this is good garden party stuff, with good music and picnics consisting of everything from blanket and butties to full dinner dress and candelabra. Sue and I lean a little towards the blanket & butties end, but we do allow ourselves garden chairs and we're more likely to take bread & wine. Bulk-buy Scheme Now is the time to remind you that I keep stocks of many useful beekeeping items at very competitive prices. I can't give you a totally precise list of either stock or prices until my next delivery arrives; I expect it before you get this newsletter, but I doubt that I'll do the sums that soon! I will however have comprehensive stocks of Langstroth equipment and important stocks of National equipment. I also have things like foundation, labels, veils, a smoker, escapes, hive tools, varroa screens & mesh, wicks, etc.. Try me! On the subject of bulk-buy, I should explain my personal financial involvement. At the AGM I felt rather like a martyr, having paid all this money out for stock and knowing that I won't get my money back for a while. I have to say that it isn't quite as noble as that. Yes I have paid out some money and no I won't get it back for a while. But, I do bias the stock I finance towards the stuff I think I may need, so I have a very local, very convenient, very competitive supplier of beekeping equipment -- The Association, via me. And if everything did collapse in a heap (It won't), I could use almost all of the stock myself -- mind you I'd have to sell an awful lot of candles! Dr. Robert Pickard. I have received the following letter from Paula Edwards of the Newbury Association inviting us to their Leaver Memorial Lecture: Dear Secretary and Members of Basingstoke & District Beekeepers' Association, We would like to invite you to attend our 12th Leaver Memorial Lecture on Friday 18th March 1994 at 7:30 pm, when Dr. Robert Pickard will give a talk on the "Latest on Bee Research at Cardiff". I am sure that Dr. Pickard needs no introduction from me, but if you have never heard him speak, I can assure you that he is a fabulous lecturer. He always has something of interest to say and puts it over in a manner which is easy to understand. I have heard him speak several times now, and have always really enjoyed it. The audience helps to make an event like this and we would be love to have a large and lively one. The venue is the same as usual, being the Upper Bucklebury Memorial Hall. This is sited North East of Thatcham. If you approach Thatcham from the East, you will see a Little Chef on your left. Just after this, turn right into Hartshill Road and continue uphill for 1.5 miles. At the top of the hill bear right into Upper Bucklebury. The Memorial Hall is on the right after about another mile. The hall is warm and large with plenty of parking. We would be delighted to see you all. Yours sincerely, Paula Edwards, Hon. Sec. Dr. Larry Connor We are very lucky to have Dr. Larry Connor here for a special meeting this April (see the diary). Larry is in Britain for the Stoneleigh Convention where he has a trade stand and is staying over at Mary and Bill Dartnall's home. Mary has been able to schedule meetings with him at several venues in Hampshire with costs shared between Associations. Our meeting at which we will be joined by members from Andover, Fleet and Winchester will be at Brighton Hill school on Thursday 28th April in the Community Hall, close to our usual meeting room. Dr. Lawrence J. Connor is now one of the most well known educationalists serving beekeeping in the USA. Dr. Buzz (to his friends) earned three degrees in entomology with a specialisation in bees, beekeeping and pollination, from Michigan State University. Serving first as University Proffessor and then President of a bee breeding firm Larry now runs the only bee related consultancy in the USA. He provides educational, book, slide and video programmes for beekeepers and organisations through Beekeeping Education Service and Wicwas press. He also edits and publishes Bee Science. Dr. Connor is also organiser of the Eastern Apicultural Association's annual residential training course and is secretary to the leading commercial honey producers' orgainsation in the USA. His work takes him all over the USA and he is a regular visitor to Europe. Membership Reminder If you haven't yet paid your membership, please do so now. We'd hate to stop sending you newslettters and so on just because you forgot! Beekeeping Library(s) At a recent committee meeting we discussed the possibility of starting an Association library. There is however an excellent library, with which I doubt we could compete on anything except locality, run by HBA and now located in Romsey. We felt that we should remind you first of this library and that you can borrow books by post (no borrowing charge, but there is a postage charge), before we talked about our local ideas. Phone Mrs. Chris Lambert (0794)-515134. Our local thought goes like this: If members who have books are prepared to lend them to the Association, which then lends them on to other members for a small fee (say 25p for most books, more for the specials?), then the income received could help to cover wear & tear and give a little to the Association. We think we would feel the need to charge a deposit in case of loss! Would you be prepared to lend your books in this way? Do you think you would use a service like this? Swarms As ever, there will soon be plenty of swarms looking for homes. I would very much like to know if you want, or can take, swarms this year. As Secretary I generally get quite a few requests and prefer to pass most on if I can. There is a concern amongst many of us at the moment about 'getting Varroa' from swarms. In practice this is probably not a serious problem because a swarm is the ideal state in which to treat a colony. Most treatments (e.g. Bayvarol) can only affect adult mites, the young being safely secreted away in capped cells. If you treat a swarm before it starts laying you have probably the highest chance that you can get of killing the mites. In fact of course, artificial swarms and an acaricide treatment are a standard and powerful control method for Varroa. St. John's Copse Most of you will by now know that the Manydown Company is leasing St. John's Copse, the location of our primary apiary, to Basingstoke & Deane Borough Council for amenity purposes. The full significance of this move is yet to be understood, but the intention is that the land will be available as a wildlife study area and will be managed on the Council's behalf for this purpose. This will mean, however, that the general public will have access to the copse and our apiary area. Everyone involved intends that this will not be a problem and that we may well benefit from the change, particularly if we are prepared to invite people to participate in beekeeping. We do this already for our own benefit as a step towards gaining new members, so this may be an opportunity rather than a problem. If the worst really does come to the worst, an alternative site is available to us from Manydown. Liability Insurance A recent article by Jessica Gorst-Williams in the Daily Telegraph (Saturday Feb. 26) discusses some interresting aspects of beekeeping and third party liability -- contact the Telegraph if you want more than this precis. Most of the time, bees cause no problems whatsoever, however in a very small number of cases, serious difficulties can arise. Jessica interviews Jane Pearse, a solicitor for the BBKA who says that it is prudent for all beekeepesr to have liability insurance to pay for any damage, injury or nuisance their bees are claimed to have caused. "Whilst it may be difficult to be 100% certain where a bee came from, the burden is on the claimant to prove the balance of probability. If someone is fatally stung close to the only hives in the immediate area, and it could be shown that that the beekeeper is failing in a duty of care, then ther could be a good case." Negligence claims against owners of most domestic animals are usually covered by houshold contents insurance, but hives moved off of the owners land can invalidate such cover. Similarly, sales of honey could result is classification as a business and may also invalidate this cover. Spokespersons from Sun Alliance and Legal & General concurred that selling honey would invalidate their houshold third party cover, although Royal insurance were prepared to 'probably ingnore it where profit was under £10 per week'. The article concluded with the statements that "Members of the BBKA (which includes BDBKA ordinary members - ed.) are covered by their subscroptions for public and products liability with an indemnity of £1M. Members must pay the first £100 of any claim." "A good insurance," adds Brian Palmer of Kent's Hadlow College, "is to breed docility in the bees."