A huge thanks to everyone who joined us for this morning’s swarm workshop — with around 30 members attending!
A special shoutout to the Education Team — especially Sam and Jane — for sharing their invaluable tips, videos, and guidance and to Lauren for the tech support.
It was interesting to see a traditional skep in action for swarm collection, videos of our members collecting swarms and hearing their strong focus on safety for both beekeepers and the public. 
For us new-bees, it was incredibly helpful to make note of what we need to know before collecting a swarm, what gear to bring to the swarm collection, how to safely transport the honey bees and how to give them the best chance of survival. Many of us now feel far more confident about collecting a swarm ourselves!
We also picked up some brilliant techniques from our experienced members — from the classic ‘dustpan and brush’ method to placing a nuc on top of a privet hedge to encourage the swarm upward with a little smoke.
Several members would like to gain more hands-on experience, so don’t forget you can request to shadow and assist an experienced swarm collector. If you’re interested in receiving a collected swarm, contact the B&DBKA Swarm Coordinator(swarm.birmingham@wbka.org.uk) to be added to the list (This is for members only)
couple of colonies of bees that hadn’t been opened for about 2-3 years. The beekeeper had sadly become allergic to bee venom.
spring & move them into standard national boxes. Assuming the queen has survived the move she might be good for breeding as the colony is calm & varroa tolerant (untreated for 3 years).
I emailed the Abbey and Clare who runs the bee education centre said I could pop and feed the bees with her. She does the Q&A for Beecraft. They don’t have Buckfast bees anymore! She explained why she prefers the ‘mongrels’
Stone mason, so he moved to shadow the cook who was the beekeeper. His organisation and stubbornness made beekeeping his passion, and ultimately he became a romanticised persona. When he was dying the abbey told him they wouldn’t carry on with his work which devastated him. Clare took over 3 years ago, as she was approached by the abbey as a local beekeeper. She runs workshops for SEND adults and children, ex service therapy sessions, zooms and educational days/weekends. She said it’s a Benedictine mission to educate and be charitable, so she invited me! She stated that her friend who is the optician in the village, travelled with Br Adam to South Africa and he apparently exaggerated and chose evidence to support his opinion which wasn’t accurate (misidentified bees). He also thought the Buckfast bees were immune to the Isle of White disease but made errors with his outcomes. Quirky insights and very interesting but not what I expected.
It was well organised, we had tables and chairs provided for us. We didn’t have any cover but the weather turned out well with only a few drops of rain. We were in the Nature/Family zone and there was a lot of interest in the observation hive from the public and especially the children. We promoted our Honey Show and also the threat of the Asian Hornet. And gave out information on both. Vesna and Maarten came too and sold a few jars of their honey.
Sam Walker joined the committee in approximately 2017 where she was the newsletter editor until 2019.She then became president of the branch from 2020-2022.Sam then had a year as our swarm coordinator in 2023 and is now concentrating on her own apiary, teaching bee courses and she is currently our branch Asian Hornet co-ordinator.
Sharif Khan joined the branch approximately 16 or 17 years ago .He became the president in 2015 and he then moved on to become the treasurer. In 2023 he stepped up and became the acting honey show manager he co ordinated the volunteers ensuring the success of the event.
Jane Nimmo (seen here collecting her module 5, honey bee biology certificate) has been our education co-ordinator for approximately 4 years. She ran lots of training courses, queen rearing sessions and is always encouraging people to take their basic bee assessment. Jane is currently the secretary for the Wbka.