The Barefoot Beekeeper

The Asian Yellow-Legged Hornet - Vespa velutina - has rampaged through France and for the last three years has occupied Jersey in the Channel Islands, threatening to invade mainland Britain using any means possible.

Several nests were found and destroyed in 2019 near the south coast of England, but we cannot be certain that others went unnoticed. This insect presents a clear and present danger to honeybees especially, with beekeepers in France losing about one in three of their hives every year to this pest. It will also cause big problems for other bees and other insects, as it has a voracious appetite and a talent for hunting down its prey.

Beekeepers will be very much on the front line in the battle to keep V. velutina out of this country, as we are likely to be the first to spot it. Do familiarise yourselves with its appearance and behaviour, and educate others so that we stand the best chance of intercepting it before it becomes established.

Visit http://ahat.org.uk for some excellent photos, which will help you distinguish it from similar-looking insects. If you can spare some time, join your local AHAT and learn how to trap and track it to its nest.

(For some reason, the AHAT link has been sending to the wrong site. it should go to ahat.org.uk )

We were on the Bovey Heathfield Nature Reserve, near Bovey Tracey in Devon, looking for Heath Potter Wasps with the noted naturalist John Walters, so I took the opportunity to record a short interview...

Brigit's new book, Dancing with Bees, is published by Chelsea Green and available from http://beestrawbridge.blogspot.com

The Asian Yellow-Legged Hornet, Vespa velutina, is a serious threat to bees and beekeeping in Britain, given its predatory nature and the fact that a large nest may contain 10-12,000 hungry insects. 

It also poses a secondary threat to birds and bats, as it has the ability to consume massive numbers of their prey, while themselves being virtually immune from attack by any of our native species. 

PLEASE LEARN ABOUT THIS DANGEROUS PEST and look out for news about it, preferably by checking the news page on https://friendsofthebees.org and don't rely on newspapers, which regularly feature pictures of the wrong species.

There is an Android app called "Asian Hornet Watch" that makes identification and reporting easy: this is an invasive non-native species that must be reported to http://www.brc.ac.uk/risc/alert.php?species=asian_hornet 

If you use FaceBook, look for my page "Defending Britain Against the Asian Hornet" for news and updates.

I hosted this discussion with about 25 other beekeepers at the Eden Project in Cornwall as part of the BIBBA SW Conference Febriary 16 2019.

Willie Robson has appeared on my podcast several times already, so if you are a regular listener, you will recognize his Northumbrian accent by now. 

Comb honey has always been an important feature of Chain Bridge Honey Farm and in this talk, Willie explains why it is important to their profitability and how they go about their production process.

https://www.chainbridgehoney.com

The ZEST hive is unusual in that it is made from solid building blocks arranged to form a long, deep container, with multiple, upper entrances. It is easy and relatively inexpensive to build, with the help of Bill's web site - www.thezesthive.com - and his YouTube videos.

Willie Robson and his family have been keeping bees in Northumberland since the 1950s. Few people know more than he does about honey farming with the native black bee, and fewer still have successfully kept them for so long in a commercial context.

This is one of two talks by Willie that I recorded at the 2018 BIBBA conference in Cirencester.

The Robson family run Chainbridge Honey Farm and you can see their web site at https://www.chainbridgehoney.com

Bryn Simon, President of Sydney Inner West Beekeepers, NSW, Australia, was in the UK and asked if he could visit and ask me some questions.

The sound quality is not perfect: there was a fair bit of background noise from road drills and seagulls, and I had the gain turned up a little too high, but if you can overlook that, we had a good chat about bees and beekeeping.

Dave Goulson is Professor of Biology at Sussex University, founder of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust and has published over 200 scientific articles on the ecology of bees and other insects. His published books include Bumblebees; their behaviour, ecology and conservation (2010, Oxford University Press) and A Sting in the Tale (2013, Jonathan Cape), and A Buzz in the Meadow (2017, Vintage Books.

Brigit Strawbridge is a campaigner on behalf of bumblebees and other wild bees and is currently working on her first book. 

Our conversation includes ways in which beekeepers can help support other pollinators; the impact of pesticides, habitat loss and diseases on wild bees; the dangers of neonicotinoids, and the current state of bee research.

Recorded at Brimpts Farm on Dartmoor during the Moor Meadows conference on July 1st 2017.