On Sunday the 22nd June Rugby Beekeepers had a marquee at the Dunchurch show. The show was busy with many visitors coming to see us.



As with all shows the observation hive was a favourite with everyone and despite the queen being quite elusive for the early part of the day she soon appeared and was wandering around doing what queens do!



The candle rolling table attracted a lot of the younger visitors who had great fun making their own decorative candles.



And of course, we had honey produced by our members' bees for sale from across the Rugby area. There also seemed to be great interest coming from hayfever sufferers who hoped it may help alleviate their symptoms.



As always the Dunchurch show was a very enjoyable event. Fortunately, the 30 degree heat we had been experiencing in the days leading up to the show had abated so wearing a full bee suit during the show wasn't too uncomfortable.

Over the weekend we held a training session for our new beekeepers

The session was aimed at how to inspect a hive for pests and disease, specifically AFB, EFB, Chalk Brood, Sac Brood, Nosema, Varroa, CBPV and the general heath and well being of the colonies.

Checking the brood box
Our new members chilling out in their bee suites

After quite a few years of having no OSR (Oil Seed Rape) being grown by our local farmers, this year there seemed to be quite a few fields of yellow around

The bees were very busy and this year, at the end of May, one of our members extracted 82lbs of honey from just two hives. This is a lot of honey and shows how OSR can allow the bees to produce a bumper late spring cop of honey.