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Spring Meeting 2022, Nottingham

26th March 2022

CABK are delighted to be bringing one of our main meetings of the year to beekeepers in the East Midlands. Our Spring meeting will be held on 26th March at Holme Pierrepont Hall, near Nottingham.  We are aiming to make this a hybrid event, with virtual attendance via Zoom – all of the content but you have to prepare your own lunch!

Arrive from 10:00 for a 10:30 start.  Plenty of car parking.

Tickets are £25 pp for in-person attendance, including a delicious hot buffet lunch, and £10 for virtual attendance, and may be purchased through the links below:

Just one day to go…!!  There are still just a few tickets available for this unique event – please book now via this link

Buy in-person tickets

Those wishing to participate virtually, via Zoom, may book by clicking the link below.

Buy virtual tickets

There is a full programme for the day.  In the morning we will have guided tours of the magnificent house and gardens and, in conjunction with the bee research team at Nottingham Trent University (NTU), led by Dr. Martin Bencsik, we will have an opportunity to see the NTU Apiary with its continuously monitored hives.  The morning sessions will conclude with a talk about some of the exciting research that is going on and there will be a workshop on the B-GOOD projects being advanced by NTU.  Lunch will be a hot buffet with 3 options – see below – and then the afternoon will feature two talks separated by a tea break.

Come along and bring your beekeeping friends, non CABK members are very welcome.

The Parterre

Our two afternoon speakers will be…

Vince Gallo

Vince Gallo

Vince tends his 15-20 hives in Surrey within his garden and two out-apiaries; one of which is at a local school. The bees are kept both as a hobby, but also for research; the latter being a result of this retired software engineer deciding to avoid boredom by undertaking a PhD at Queen Mary, University of London (QMUL). The research topic concerns the use and construction of honeycomb and now, in the third year, the bees and comb are beginning to surrender some answers.
Vince is an active member of Reigate Beekeepers which provides ample opportunity to help other beekeepers, to assist the public as a swarm collector and to promote the interests of bees by supporting the association at summer shows and by giving talks at local groups and schools.

“My path to understanding the mechanisms of honeycomb construction”

Experimental comb

Honeycomb is always beautiful, often regular, and commonplace, and the method by which bees achieve its construction has fascinated and eluded scientists and beekeepers for centuries, and for my PhD research I have been continuing this attempt – with some success. I will explain my experiments, exploiting my domestic apiary, which have included video recording of observation hives, and placement of assorted stimuli onto which the bees built honeycomb. I will also present a number of custom physical and software tools which I designed and built that allowed me to take measurements and make comparisons of the resulting wax constructions. In this talk, while discussing these methods and equipment, I will disclose both successes and the more numerous failures that illustrate quite how challenging and entertaining was this process.

Harriet Hall

Harriet Hall

Harriet Hall is a PhD student in her fourth and final year at Nottingham Trent University, studying the Varroa mite and its host species, Apis mellifera.
“My research focuses primarily on substrate-borne vibrations produced by both mite and bee: their capture using vibration sensing technology, the identification and characterisation of the features of those vibrations, and the attribution of those specific vibrational traces to their corresponding bee or mite behaviour.

I have previously researched the foraging behaviour of the hairy footed flower bee, Anthophora plumipes, at a site in Portugal, as well as the mating behaviour of two-spotted crickets, Gryllus bimaculatus, during my undergraduate degree, where I studied zoology.”

 

“Capturing vibrations originating from Varroa destructor individuals”

Current methods of Varroa detection within honeybee colonies necessitate the physical opening of hives and removal of bees/brood, or regular, in-person inspection of the base board. Precision beekeeping is a recent apiary management strategy that aims to reduce colony stress through the remote collection of various hive data (such as temperature, weight and the number of incoming/outgoing bees), which can then be passed on to beekeepers to inform them of colony events (such as swarming) or changes in status (such as colony death, queen-less-ness).

Varroa on accelerometer

The work that I have carried out as part of my PhD programme investigates the opportunity to detect the presence of Varroa mites in honeybee hives remotely, using vibration as the monitored parameter. Accelerometer sensors, used in my study, have previously been highly successful in the detection and characterisation of both individual honeybee vibrational signals and overall changes in the colony state.

I will discuss the successful use of these sensors in the detection of individual Varroa mite vibrations, an organism of minute size in comparison to a honeybee. Through this investigation, a never-before described Varroa behaviour has been discovered, which has a corresponding vibrational trace. I have carefully studied and characterised the vibration produced by this behaviour, which I have termed ‘jolting’, due to the abrupt movement of the mite.

The results of this study have now laid a foundation for further work into the remote detection of Varroa mites in the capped brood cells of the comb, using accelerometers as a sensing tool. I will discuss this new endeavour and its implications in terms of remote mite monitoring, as well as speculating on the potential function of this new behaviour, based on the results so far.

NTU Apiary



Hot Buffet Options
Salmon en Croute with a Tarragon Buerre Blanc, Buttered New Potatoes, Panache of Seasonal Vegetables
Cajun Chicken Pasta with Rustic Breads and a Mixed Leaf Salad
Wild Mushroom and Pepper Fricasse, Long Grain Rice, Garlic Bread and Mixed Leaf Salad


Cancellation Policy – recognising the continuing uncertainties, we will be as flexible as possible regarding cancellation and refunds.
In-person bookings will close at midnight on Sunday 20th March to allow final numbers to be provided for catering purposes.  Up until that time we will offer a full refund for cancellation.
If we cancel the event, for example because numbers are too low, we will of course make a full refund of any monies paid.

Details

Date:
26th March 2022

Organiser

Sue Carter
Email
secretary@cabk.org.uk

Venue

Holme Pierrepont Hall
Nottingham, NG12 2LD United Kingdom