March: Focus on disease

On Tuesday 31st March we held a "Bee Disease Awareness and Diagnostic Clinic"

Splitting the evening into two halves we started with a talk about the Small Hive Beetle.

Understanding some more about the beetle's life cycle and how it has adapted to exploit the opportunities of the honey bee hive should make us all less intimidated by the news of its progress ever closer to the UK.

After that several beekeepers who had been brave enough to collect a sample of their bees were able to test them Nosema.

 




Sadly this involves killing a sample of about 30 bees and then snipping them apart...

Examining the bee abdomen soup under the microscope some members found rather more nosema spores than they would like, so will be getting their bees onto new comb as soon as they possibly can.

This event was kindly sponsored by BDI (Bee Disease Insurance).  It won't be our only opportunity to test bees for Nosema and Acarine this year.  If you didn't make it this time we encourage you to bring a sample to the next session.  We will ensure the dates are well advertised on the website calender, facebook and in the monthly newsletter.