On the 29th of June Rugby Beekeepers attended the Wolston & Brandon Garden Walk-About. This an event we have attended in the past and is a lovely event with lots of visitors. lovely gardens and flower displays



As we attend all the shows during the year with the same marquee and setup the pictures can become a bit repetitive. Here's someone selling honey



people looking at our observation hive trying to find the queen



Rugby Beekeepers are one of eight associations that are a part of the Warwickshire Beekeepers Association. The Warwickshire Beekeepers Association is a registered charity and our declared charitable goal is to "to advance the education of the public and beekeepers in the craft of beekeeping and promote the importance of bees in the environment". The public events that we attend allow us to do this by interacting with the visitors, explaining what we do, why we do it and more importantly how people can help bees and even become beekeepers. At most events we have a handful of people who really want to find out more about the craft of beekeeping and some of them ask us to put them down on the list of people wishing to attend our beginners' course. More details about this can be found here Details about becoming a member of our association can be found here

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.

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.

On Bank Holiday Monday, the 5th May, Rugby Beekeepers attended the Rugby Spring Fair. This was the first time the event had been held since Covid arrived and it was great to be able to take part again.

During the day there was a constant flow of visitors to the stand


As always the observation hive is a favourite especially with the younger visitors


The queen is definitely in there and the people lucky enough to find her went away with a sticker!

We also had a good selection of our members honey for sale and during the day many jars were sold. A lot of people wanted some as they felt it helped with hayfever. This may be due to our honey not being heavily filtered, so pollen grains from the local flora are in it.