Scottish Native Honeybee Society

[Poly Hive]

You do all realise that is the same weekend as the SBA AGM? personally I can only attend one so it won't be the SNHS.

PH

[emcampbell]

You do all realise that is the same weekend as the SBA AGM? personally I can only attend one so it won't be the SNHS.

PH

Yup we are aware of that and most of us organisers will be at both. SNHBS on Saturday / SBA on Sunday. Venues are pretty close as well which means people travelling from distance can stay local.

Sorry you won't be able to make it Pete. Should be fun.

[Poly Hive]

Aye well I am having to make some hard choices as the priority at the moment is the house and garden.

[emcampbell]

Scottish Native Honey Bee Society
Annual Meeting – Loch Leven Community Campus, Kinross
Saturday 17 March 2018 at 10:00-16:00

Speakers:
Per Kryger, Aarhus University, Denmark.
Per is a Danish scientist working in the SMARTBEES and other projects. He will give us an update on progress exploring genetic variation in honey bees and on the tools becoming available for breeders.
Jon Getty, Native Irish Honey Bee Society.
Jon is secretary of the Belfast Beekeepers Association and the webmaster of NIHBS. He will share his extensive knowledge of queen rearing and the use of mini-nuclei.
Ian Lennox, Coordinator of the new project on assessing the status of native honey bees in Scotland.
Ian will report on the activities of a newly formed group to support this project and on the progress expected in 2018.
----------
Business meeting:
Report from the Chair on SNHBS activities since the launch and a look ahead to 2018 and beyond.
Financial report; Members’ forum; Changes to the Constitution; Election of the new board.
----------
The meeting is open to members. Anyone interested can join the society for £20 at www.snhbs.scot
A buffet lunch will be available at £7.50 for people registering their interest by 10 March via the Eventbrite link at the website above.

[emcampbell]

Quick update !

Recently the society has been asking for samples of "AMM" like bees for a survey across Scotland. This was done in three stages....1st beekeepers were asked to get hi-res images of likely colonies which were assessed by a panel of experts visually. Any promising colonies were then sampled and assessed more closely and wing morph done on a discriminatory basis. Finally an overall score was assigned and if a threshold was reached a sample of bees was sent off to be analysed using a cutting edge NextGen DNA analysis method being developed across the EU to discriminate sub-species. The Scottish samples are in the pilot of this new technology that if successful will be available to beekeepers to assess colonies for subspecies but also a range of breeding factors and for a low per sample cost.

Will be interesting to find out results ! Thanks to contributors.