Our Apiary Manager, Ken, will resume Wednesday evening meetings at the Branch Apiary on 16 April.

Meetings will be every week on Wednesdays from 5 pm until the jobs are finished. They'll be a great opportunity for beginners to get hands-on experience in managing colonies and follow their progress through the spring and summer. Anyone can come along (experienced beekeepers are welcome too!) although if you need to borrow a suit it's best to check with Ken beforehand. You'll be able to get to grips with swarm control, the weekly checks for things like healthy brood and adequate stores, and how to deal with problems, and you'll be able to see how your bees get on compared with the branch's.

We look forwards to seeing you there.

The County association (of which Kidderminster BKA is one of the seven branches) is an active participant in four shows which take place each year at the Three Counties Showground in Malvern,

Countrytastic

The RHS Malvern Spring Festival

The Royal Three Counties Show

The Malvern Autumn Show

The shows inform and educate the public, promote beekeeping and offer members the opportunity to sell their honey. All these shows take a lot of organising which for many years has been done largely by one person, who has ultimately decided he needs to take a well-earned rest. That means we need people to take over, otherwise we’ll not be able to take part in the shows at all. It might turn out that we’re not able to do all of them straight away, but we need to look at which shows we think are important and do what we can to Save (at least some of) Our Shows.

We need

  • a co-ordinator and team of 3–4 for Countrytastic
  • someone to liaise between BBKA and WBKA and TCAS about the RHS Malvern Spring Festival and a support team of 3–4 to plan, set up and break down and to organise honey sales and stewarding
  • someone to attend the Steering Committee and a team of 2–3 to plan, set up and organise stewarding for our bit of the Three Counties Show
  • a Honey Show team of 5–6 to process the schedule, entries and prizes, arrange judge and steward, set up tables and receive exhibits, organise honey sales and organise stewarding and breakdown at the Malvern Autumn Show.

Which role might you take? Come and discuss your contribution on Monday 10 Feb at 7pm in Waitrose community room on London Road in Worcester.

Sugar for feeding bees is available to members free of charge. Supermarkets kindly donate broken bags of sugar which would otherwise be wasted and they are collected by Julie Williams to distribute to our members. 

If you would like to some sugar to feed your bees, please contact Julie.

Two new books have been added to the branch's small library, The mind of a bee and The Secret Life of a Meadow, and all members are welcome to borrow them.

To find out more, read the main article about the library.