Spring Convention – 2026

Oh how I enjoy a beekeeping convention!

There are 4 elements to a convention:-

1. Lectures from National and International Speakers on the latest research involving honeybees, how they function, their diseases, pests and viruses, bumble and solitary bees in the environment
2. Workshops, usually 2 hours, on every subject from making cosmetics and wax melts, to running apiaries and taking modules.
3. Shopping. Every conceivable book, clothing, hive type, spinner, candle mould , wax exchange.
4. Competitions on honey, mead, wax candles, pots and melts, photography, promotional displays and inventions.
5. Meeting people – beekeeping people from all over the country and other countries- what do they do? What are their challenges and solutions?

Lectures I attended included:-

• Professor Robert Paxton on Deformed wing virus.
  • The countryside, inhospitable for bees and pollination
• Andrew Abrahams : The Black bee, apis melifera melifera, abroad
• Professor Maria Spivak – Honey bee health care, propolis and hygienic behaviour
  • Pramatic Bee breeding for Beekeepers
• Dr Laura Brettell. Virus threats to honeybees
• Professor Geraldine Wright- Importance of sterols in the diet of the honeybee.

My main take aways:-

1. Humility and amazement at the effort researchers go to recording what bees do, how they do it, tracing what is virus, what is pesticide, what is something else.
2. Use local bee genetics- if you wish to inflict new viruses, tropilaelaps, small hive beetle- import bees, and queens… Breed from your best bees. It does not matter how you define ‘best’. Queen bees need multiple matings from multiple drones to maintain healthy bee genetics. There is a significance to a colony which is 5 years old. Significant o me because 3 times I have got colonies to 5 years without treating. Need to listen to this lecture again when it becomes available online. Prof Steve Martin says I should be more upfront about what I do. Article to follow.
3. Honeybees taken from tree cavities are found to surround themselves with propolis. Deep cuts 7mm apart in the brood box will encourage bees to propolise. I need to wait until the lectures are available to check the depth. I have used cork and it did not work well. I’m trying roughing up boxes with a wire bush this year. The researchers tried pollen collector boards against the side walls as part of the trial, which worked well. Prof Spivak said ‘no beekeeper would do this’ . Look forward to rough cut inner box walls from suppliers. Bees are known to use the propolis to self medicate. The mechanism is not yet known.
4. Cholestorol is a sterol. Sterols are used for cell building. I attended the lectures 20 years ago where we were wondering about roses with no scent, learned about gant charts – stem length, colour, repeat flowering. Scent was not on the gant chart hence roses with no scent. What do we need for colour, anther length, pollens for bees we wondered? 18 years of research later….. Work with Kew gardens mapping the histols and sterols in flowering plants, which ones the bees used when……. Beautiful painstaking charts. What do bees need? Suspecting is not enough. We need to prove things to influence farming, gardening and lan d management practice.. Each caste of bees, at each stage of development needs a different balance of sterols and histols. No single pollen provides this. The bees are forced to collect from multiple sources. There are 6 key sterols. No pollen pattie contains all of them. It is not known whether bees will use patties in preference. It is known that the nurse bees stimulate collection of pollen. It is not known how. It is not known how the forager bee, who does not eat the pollen, knows what to collect or how to find it. So we need to see at least 7 different colours of pollen in our colonies…

5. Many viruses affect honeybees (and us!). Many viruses can remain latent within the colony and only be activated in times of stress (cold sores). Prior to varroa about 20% of colonies had deformed wing virus, now all colonies have it. The bees only show the deformed wings we are familiar with if the virus gets into the forming wing buds. A number of rare things need to come together for this to happen. Bees affected by deformed wing virus have impaired learning, do not live so long. Honeybees do not live long anyway- if 30% reduce their lives by 4 days this has a significant effect on the colony. Be aware of varroa loads in the colony. All the chemicals in the wider environment and the bee colony affect both human and honeybee health. Use as few as possible. Varroa develops too. Co-ordinate varroa treatment- do it at the same time using the same methods and vary the treatments in different years. Both managing varroa treatments and using minimal chemicals will help those aiming for treatment free and those using treatments because they will be effective for more years.

I also discussed with other associations, swarm collection lists and charges, apiary support, policies for associations.

Louise Evans

May 2026