8 January 2015 John Coyle - Bee Keeping

President Peter Farr welcomed a good turnout of members and visitors Agnés Hilley and Christina Mbiza to the first meeting of 2015.
The speaker for the evening was John Coyle, a retired self employed tree nursery owner/sign maker. John got into beekeeping 33 years ago and is currently chairman of Dunblane & Stirling Beekeepers Association and also one of the trustees of the Scottish Beekeepers Association.
He gave a detailed and fascinating insight into the life of the honey bee. During winter, honeybees do not hibernate but live on reserves of honey and must maintain a temperature of 20° to survive. There are usually 25-30,000 workers (female) to one queen bee and all the drones (male) die off in winter. The queen mates with some 10 to 18 drones before winter and this enables her to produce some 1000 eggs per day between late February and September.
Among many other pieces of information, John told the audience that the life span of a drone is between 50 and 60 days and worker bees have a 40 day life span before dying from wing fatigue. The total distance covered by workers to produce one pound weight of honey is around 54,000 miles.
Honey bees worldwide are threatened by a pest called Varroa which is proving very difficult to control and has been in the UK since 1998. There are some signs that the bees themselves are exercising controls but the problem is still very significant.
After fielding a series of questions from the audience, Andrew Hilley gave John a well-deserved vote of thanks for a very interesting talk.
Further information can be found on: http://www.dunblanebeekeepers.com/