Members

The Buzz from the Branch News Letter – December

Dear Members,

Note: the complete winter programme is now ready. Note information for Jan-April meetings is now complete. See Events – Next Meetings page (Events-Next Meeting – East Devon Beekeepers).

🌟Seasons greetings to you all🌟
🎄🎄🎄🎄 Thursday 4th December 1930 hrs Kilmington Village Hall 🎄 🎄
We shall again be sampling some of this year’s BBKA honey recipes. Six volunteer cooks have put their baking skills to the test and will be providing the recipes for the evening. Who will produce the winning recipe? You will all be the tasters and judges.
Also, 🌟 ⭐️ Please add a few festive nibbles to the Xmas table to enjoy during the evening (savoury or sweet) and partners are welcome to our food themed evening.
Remember too we’ll have our usual xmas raffle 🎁 🎉 with some wonderful prizes.
Small items of bee equipment will be on sale.
Also remaining stock of our East Devon polo shirts will be available to purchase (£12)

It’s your last opportunity to collect your oxalic acid varroa treatment from Rosie Maggs. If you placed an order please turn up on Dec 4th to collect it.

Membership Renewals
A reminder that all memberships need to be renewed by 31st Dec. If you can complete your renewal before Christmas it would be much appreciated.
If you are someone who has completed the online form or sent a paper form, please note that until you have made your payment your renewal for 2026 cannot be activated. Your original renewal request was mailed to you circa Oct 25th. Do check your Spam and if you need a new one please let me know.

East Devon magazine contributors. Read all about it. 📢
Do read the article in the latest winter edition of Beekeeping – pages 13-15. Paul Lowman from our apiary team submitted a tale worth reading.
Front cover and follow up item page 11 was submitted by Rhiannon Hodson. Thanks to you both.

Looking ahead to 2026 our first meeting will be Thursday Jan 8th
Varroa management will be the topic.
David Packham, our retired bee inspector, is well known to us and he will be addressing this issue.
In order to make his talk particularly pertinent to ourselves he would appreciate us doing a very quick survey.
If you could please think about the following questions he has posed and send me answers ASAP. This will give David enough time to read the results and adapt his talk accordingly.
Thanks everyone.Please try to respond.
“Which of the following is your main method of controlling Varroa? Which of the others (if any) do you use? Are there any that you aspire to use or would like to know more about?

1. Authorised Miticides
2. Biotechnical methods – like drone removal etc
3. Mesh Floor, Gyms
4. Queen Selection
5. “Treatment free”

News from BBKA – John has put the whole of this communication below on our branch website. A good many of you should be interested and it follows on nicely from the talk Sue Stokes gave us after our branch AGM.

BBKA Website (https://www.bbka.org.uk/)

A new BBKA website will go live from Dec 1st. The updated site is designed to offer improved navigation and engaging content for the general public seeking information on honey bees, beekeeping, the Yellow-legged Asian Hornet and honey.
We’ve also streamlined how you access member-only information. The dedicated ‘Beekeepers’ area on the old website has now been retired, and all member exclusive resources have been relocated to our learning platform. This change ensures that materials are securely available to members only, as the new website itself does not support restricted access.
BBKA Learning Online (Member Hub) (https://learning.bbka.org.uk/)
The learning platform will be renamed ‘BBKA Member Hub’ to coincide with the launch of the new redesigned website.
Registered, Partner, School, Junior and Honorary Members can access the ‘Member Hub’ using their membership number and postcode and it will remain the main platform for beekeeping resources and training materials.

Finally, to everyone who has for whatever reason decided not to renew their membership next year, this is your final Buzzmail. We hope you have enjoyed your time with East Devon Beekeepers and all the best to you. Should you wish to ‘hook up’ again you know where we are!

Val🐝

Contacts:

Chair: Alasdair Bruce. chair24@edbk.co.uk

Treasurer: Keith Bone. charandale@gmail.com

Secretary: Val Bone. val.valbone@gmail.com

Swarms: Stan Wroe. stanwroe@aol.com