Dear friends,
As our bees prepare for winter we are looking ahead to a time of vigorous new activity envisioning the great bee event in Holland in autumn 2018. “Learning from the Bees” will take place from 31st August to 2nd September 2018. We will be joined by bee lovers from all over the world, scientists, artists, musicians, conservationists, farmers and beekeepers who unite in one vision: to make the world a better place for bees, for all living creatures, for all of us. As yet, we are unable to confirm the exact location of this event, but if you’d like to join the dedicated conference mailing list, we will let you know more detail as soon as we can.
Natural Bee Husbandry
The Natural Bee Husbandry magazine has been a terrific world wide success and has now has well over 1000 subscribers. Issue 5 is about to posted/emailed and this is the last issue for those who subscribed from the first issues (issue 1 was a free bonus addition). If you would like to renew your subscription please subscribe here.
Growing for Bees
As we pointed out in our last newsletter, purchasing “bee-friendly” plants, seeds and bulbs is not a straightforward issue; as Dave Goulson’s research revealed, many products labelled thus contain pesticides. To be sure that the bees are offered untainted sustenance early in the year when they start searching for pollen from crocus, snowdrop and other early blossoms please check out the marvellous range of bulbs at Christall in the Netherlands. And if you have sourced organically or biodynamically grown bulbs elsewhere we would love to hear from you.
Photographic Competition
Hundreds of people joined us in celebrating bees in the wild and we are delighted with the results. The judges had a difficult but enjoyable task of picking the top three. You can see all the entries here.
First place in the Photographic Competition
Guardian of the Oak - South Africa By Jenny Cullinan of Ujubee
And now continuing the theme of wild bees, we’d like to share with you a recent trip Trustee Jonathan Powell undertook to further his study of the bee in the wild - a field of knowledge we continually strive to enhance so as to better serve the bees in our care:
Belarus - Bringing Back the Bears and Bees (whoa! Look at all those B’s)
"I am currently writing a new book on Forest Bees which follows on from the ebook "The Tree Beekeeping Field Guide". As part of the research he travelled to the 96,000 hectare forest of Naliboki in Belarus. Here in this half swamp, half forest the traditional Belarus method of log hives in tree platforms and a basic forest living are being revived by Ivan Mulin and the tree beekeeping brotherhood of Fratrum Mellicidarum."
To read more about Belarus tree beekeeping please visit the full article here ...
Returning a restored log hive to the Naliboki forest
Website
We work hard to keep our wonderful resource, the new Science pages on our website, updated. If you come across any interesting research that serves to further validate the practices of an unequivocally bee-centered husbandry, we would love to hear from you.
Joint Second Place in our Photographic Competition - A 10 year old wild colony in a
hollow plane tree embalmed with propolis - France. By Emmanuel Faure
Now read how propolis protects bees from foul brood in our latest addition to the science pages.
LetBee for sustainable beekeeping in Turkey
The NBKT’s consultancy role in the above project is reaching completion at the end of this year.
In December we will engage in teaching a beekeeping course together with our Dutch partners SmartBeeing and Aronja in Macedonia; the final event will be a conference for Turkish Beekeepers where we will present our assessment of the potential for better and more sustainable practice in Turkey.
Sunhive Courses
Thanks to Rachel Hanney’s unequalled expertise and her unwavering commitment to the ideal of the Sun Hive, we have been able to maintain our schedule of workshops instructing people in these valuable skills. Thanks are also due to Tablehurst Farm, the UK's flagship biodynamic farm, for hosting Rachel’s courses. There could hardly be a more ideal environment to taste the reality of true regenerative farming.
Summing Up
In brief, the Trust looks back over an incredible 12 months of new projects:
Translation and Publication of The Spiritual Foundations of Beekeeping
Sun Hive Courses
Photographic Competition - Celebrating the Wildness of Honey Bees
Log Hive Courses
Web Site - Science Page
Re-wilding project - Spain
Launch Of Natural Beekeeping Husbandry
LetBee Project
Finances
As you will be aware, our Trust income derives from the volunteer efforts our trustee undertake to generate income in the form of fees for lecturing, courses and public relations work. In addition we receive regular donations from a wonderful group of supporters as well as occasional gifts from corporate sponsors who engage in bee-related activities that meet our ethical criteria.
We have recently lent financial support to a French film production, a small rewilding project in Kent, England and, earlier in the year, Dave Goulson’s independent research into pesticides in garden plants. A number of projects are under consideration right now, and we would assure you that our decisions will be guided by the potential we see in contributing to bee conservation, education and rewilding the honeybee in the best possible way.
We thank our patient families, bee partners, sponsors and individual supporters who have made this possible.
The Trustees of the Natural Beekeeping Trust