Dear Member,

What do we have to look forward to in October? The Rugby Honey Show of course! Come along with friends and family on Saturday 15th Oct to the United Reform Church Hall on Hillmorton Road at 2.00pm, or 3.30pm if you only want tea and honey cake and to view the exhibits.

If you want to join in the fun, why not submit an entry or two. Even if you have no honey you can always bake a cake with someone else’s honey - Tesco, Aldi or Sainsbury will oblige with something - choose a strong tasting honey for best results.

Look at the schedule you got with last month’s WB and send me an entry by post or email and I will forward you a label to fix to your entry. David Harris has already submitted his entry so he gets a gold star as the first submission. Also two of our newer beekeepers, Gill and Fran have kindly volunteered to help with preparing and serving tea at the Honey Show. Navin and Greg and Lizzie also offered to help, so thank you all, it will make my life easier on the 15th!

At the September meeting it seemed that on the whole this has been a good year as far as honey yield is concerned, but there have been some problems with queen mating and possibly with wasps clearing out stores, or maybe just bad weather meant the bees have consumed stores left after the honey harvest.

Now that the tasks in the apiary are winding down for winter, this is a good time to think about improving your bee knowledge. While it is possible to keep bees with only a rudimentary knowledge of their fascinating behaviour, biology and social organisation, acquiring more knowledge either through reading or attending courses, or undertaking study with BBKA modules, will make it a more enjoyable and successful hobby - I promise. We have a library which is kept at the Friends Meeting House and supervised by Gail Plester so do ask to look at the books and take something away to read at your leisure.

You may have noticed that some of your hives are very gummed up with propolis and you get your gloves covered with this gummy substance when you inspect. At this time of year the bees are hunkering down for the winter, so a bit like us they are trying to reduce draughts, and also keep pests like the wax moth and wasps out of their nest. So, they fill every small cavity with propolis which they collect from trees and shrubs - conifers are a particularly popular source of propolis. It is a substance valuable to the bee as it has some anti-bacterial qualities, and in a wild nest the bees will propolise rough surfaces and almost enclose the walls surrounding the brood nest. Polished brood cells waiting for eggs to be laid are also lined with propolis, providing some antibacterial protection for the young larvae.. Different hives will produce more or less propolis, and I read an article recently about the commercial collection of propolis in South America where they found that more propolis was produced in colonies that were in full sunlight, those in more shaded areas producing less. So think about this when you locate your hives.

Margaret Holdsworth