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Thread: Bee breeding/improvement groups

  1. #61

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    I don't want you to get the wrong idea - I think Bibba are a wonderful organisation and I know that like most beekeeping bodies they're run by amateurs. Maybe a more comprehensive guide to groups on the website would be a good idea. And if the ethos of Bibba is to foster a network of groups then it needs to be a good bit easier than this to set one of their groups up. Or as in my case to carry out the planning stages.

    Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

  2. #62
    Senior Member
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    I agree. BIBBA are currently working on a whole new website full of knobs and whistles that will make everything easier. The old one was set up and maintained by Dave Cushman and when he died we had no-one who could decipher Dave's system which he had built from first principles. Roger Patterson hid himself away to get to grips with the thing and can now maintain it but while he was working on it the committee decided to start again with a new, modern one. The old one is now just kept ticking over until the new one is ready.

    As for setting up groups there are no rules about how it should be done but BIBBA used to have an old booklet that contained some suggestions. It's out of print and I have never seen it so Jo, the groups secretary, has been planning to publish an updated one for a while but, presumably, has been too busy to complete the task.

    Some time ago we appealed for members to put themselves forward as regional group coordinators but we failed to get enough volunteers to cover the whole area. I cover North Wales and, I believe, Enid covers the whole of Scotland - too big an area in my opinion. The co-ordinators are meant to help you to organise, to provide some technical help and better access to the BIBBA committee and services.

    At the end of the day to become a group you need your members to agree how they should run their own group and then email Jo Widdicombe with the group name and contact details. How you run the group is up to you but the last BIBBA magazine should help as it describes several existing groups and explains how they are run. You will see that they are all different and range in complexity and size from 1 person to around 100. When we got organised in North Wales we did not refer to any existing group structures but sorted out a system that suited us. The overriding circumstances that dictated the structure we ended up with were the cost of fuel, poor road communications and dispersed locations of all the interested parties. We ended up with lots of small groups who got together occasionally in one large assembly to hold talks, training sessions and to compare stocks. We also have an agreement whereby we are each entitled to take grafts from any colony belonging to any beekeeper. That enables every member to have the pick of hundreds of colonies to breed from. We have also arranged a remote mating site that all the groups can use and we obtained a small grant to help make the site sheep-proof, to purchase a shared carricell, scanner and queenrearing equipment. As far as I know none of our small groups carries money or collects subs. Each individual owns his own kit apart from the small amount that was purchased with the grant money. Those items are officially owned by the local beekeeping association who are happy to encourage our BIBBA groups as they can see the advantage of our flooding the whole area with compatible drones. The association also has a nuc co-ordinator who puts new beekeepers in touch with group members so that we can offer local bees to all novices.

    Steve
    Last edited by Rosie; 10-07-2012 at 12:06 PM.

  3. #63
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    There is a massive interest in queenrearing.
    I have nearly 50 people on a mailing list I started compiling in Mid May and there are usually more than 20 attending our Monday evening meetings.
    Getting a tenner off most of them buys a hell of a lot of cell cups and queenrearing equipment. It even stretched to buying a smoker and hive tool and stuff like that which stays permanently at the association apiary.

    At the moment all the grafts are coming from my queens as we are in the early stages of this and almost all the group members have swarmy mongrels.
    Over the next couple of years I would like to think there is a significant improvement in the local bee stock.
    A lot of the people in the group are at the end of their rope with the stock they have.
    One group member was given a prime swarm on 14th May.
    She called me about a swarm in her garden on 1st July and when I checked her bees there was only a wee bit of drone brood and a few cells of worker. Her colony must have swarmed again about 27 days after being housed and the one in the garden was a cast.
    How can anyone manage bees like that?
    They were not overfed and had plenty of room.
    A lot of our members have stock like that.

  4. #64
    Senior Member prakel's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by prakel View Post
    I had three Carnica type swarms turn up at a single apiary during the first half of May -actually had another three turn up elsewhere in the general area- which I'm convinced came from the same hive; you could see the decreasing size with each arrival, the third barely covered two BS frames (of which I don't have many lurking around but they are good for bait hives). I won't be at all surprised to see them make an attempt to 'go' again later this year.
    Returning to this one in the spirit of fairness.

    Not one of those carnica swarms made any effort to go again and all, apart from one which turned drone layer, gave a good (to v.good) account of themselves in a less than ideal summer.

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