This Newsletter is being sent out rather later than intended because we have had some problems over the venue for our meeting next week. With the unavailability of Radbrook we had hoped to be able to settle regularly at Shirehall for our indoor meetings. However this plan has already been derailed because the County needs all its meeting rooms for a large conference on Wednesday. Fortunately Shrewsbury School have very kindly offered to make accommodation available to us, so November's meeting will be held there. Please read the more detailed information in para. below for how to get there.

Elsewhere in this edition there is some good news from BBKA about varroa treatments (para. ) and some bad news from SBKA about our own organisation (next item). As you will see, we were unable to elect a new committee for the coming year. It was agreed that the current committee will carry until the end of the year to allow us a second attempt at elections at the December meeting. For those who might be interested in standing for the committee but wonder about the workload involved, you should know that this is not a huge commitment. We meet about every eight weeks for a couple of hours (maximum) to conduct essential business and review the programme. Though it is not difficult or time-consuming we do need a constant input of new ideas and energy from members of all levels of experience. The officers (president, chair, secretary, treasurer) do of course have more substantial roles but to be fair to them it is important that we do have new members joining the committee who would be prepared to understudy these tasks. So if you are not already a committee member please consider volunteering for nomination. If you are currently a member and wish to continue you must let the secretary know.

Some members have taken various levels of the new BBKA examinations in recent years but have had to go elsewhere to do that. The committee would like to know what demand there might for such opportunities locally. Please let the chairman know if you would be interested in taking a BBKA examination if SBKA were to organise it in Shropshire.

2. Report of the Annual General Meeting

The October meeting was our AGM and followed the usual format, with reports from the Chair (Ray Green) on the year's activities and from the Treasurer (Roger Evans) on the Association's finances. The latter are in a 'steady state' with expenditure covered by income, especially when boosted by gift-aid that allows the tax to be reclaimed. There are also capital reserves which are earmarked for future developments, for example for the re-establishment of the apiary away from Radbrook when this becomes necessary (probably sooner rather than later); and for costs involved in creating and equipping a new base now that our old one is no longer available.

However, the income will be under further strain in the next year because of the cost involved in hiring meeting rooms and the rise in capitation due to the BBKA. The treasurer therefore proposed an increase in the annual subscription for members to allow for these elements. In the discussion that followed there was general agreement that our fees are good value for money. Even with the proposed increase the SBKA charges will still be at the lower end of the range current across the country. The Treasurer's proposal was therefore passed. Renewal notices will be sent out soon, together with encouragement to step up the move to electronic transmission of this Newsletter. At the moment only a small minority of members have committed themselves to downloading it from our website each month. Since the cost of printing and posting it in the conventional way is by far the biggest charge on our funds, it would make a significant difference to the health of our finances if a majority of members took this plunge.

The other major item on the agenda was the election of the Committee for the coming year. Unfortunately the secretary (Penny Carkeet-James) had to report that despite every member having been sent a nomination form with the September Newsletter, not one nomination had been received. Perhaps current committee members had assumed that their names would be automatically be presented for a vote but, as the Chairman pointed out, this is not good business practice and the fact that it has been done in the past is not a good reason to keep on doing it. [I have to confess that I was one of the defaulters so must share the collective guilt - Ed.] Consequently, the election of a new committee was postponed. Members are therefore again asked to send in nominations (remember you can volunteer yourself for nomination) to the secretary by the end of this month and elections will now be held at the December meeting.

After the AGM business was concluded, the remainder of the meeting was taken up with an interesting discussion about the Shrewsbury Flower Show and the display and sale of members' honey.

3. Childhood Chills Give Bees Six Left Feet

Honeybees keep just a bit cool when their young turn into lousy dancers. A foraging bee is best equipped for dance communication if it developed in a warm nursery during its critical pupae stage. It's a serious problem for adult honeybees, explains Jurgen Tautz of Wurtzburg University in Germany. When a worker bee comes home after finding food she does a little dance to communicate the location of her discovery. A bad dancer can leave her nest mates without clear directions of much motivation to visit her windfall. Bees that develop in incubators at the cool end of the honeybees hive temperatures didn't dance as well as bees kept at the temperature in the upper range.

"I don't think anybody has looked at this before' commented Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffmann of the Carl Hayden Bee Research Centre in Tucson, USA. Before this, when researchers came across bee variation they focused on the insects' genetics but the paper makes a dramatic reminder that temperature and other quirks of the environment need consideration.

Bees lack the specialised physiology that keeps birds and mammals at even temperatures. Yet honeybees regulate temperatures for their offspring by carrying water to the hive and cooling it through evaporation or by madly flexing their muscles to generate heat. Such work takes a lot of energy and Tautz and his colleagues calculate from other research that a typical hive devotes to temperature regulation about 40 percent of the energy supplied by the nectar that workers collect during the year. That investment suggests that temperature management matters a great deal. To explore its ramifications three broods of youngsters were incubated at 32C, 24C and 36C.The treatment took place during the pupal stage, when young bees undergo their last major transformation in assuming an adult body. The temperature didn't affect how many of the bees matured nor did it influence their adult appearance.

When bees reached the foraging age, tests showed that dances of the chilled group after visits to a sugar water source had sloppier variations and fewer turns. It was thought that chilled rearing affected the bees' nervous systems during a critical stage when it was changing to meet adult demands.
Susan Milius Published in The Scottish Beekeeper. Courtesy of BEES

4. How Did Bees Survive The Dino-Killing Asteroid?

Tropical honeybees survived the asteroid impact that most scientists agree led to the demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. One scientist thinks that's a bit strange. Researchers aren't sure what mechanisms drove the dinosaurs to extinction. The impact would have killed a lot of life but dust and debris kicked high into the atmosphere is thought by some to have created a winter, years in length that disrupted the food chain. Increased volcanic activity might also have played a part.

Many species besides dinosaurs died out, yet some endured. Jacqueline Kozisek of the University of New Orleans is looking at one survivor that hasn't evolved much since. Tropical honeybees, preserved in amber, are pretty much identical to their descendants. Since modern bees could not endure years of dark and cold, their ancestors couldn't have either. Modern bees like temperatures around 88 to 93 Celsius, the best range for nectar-rich flowering plants they feed on. Based on what is known about the climate 65 million years ago, it is estimated that a prolonged temperature drop of more than 2 to 7 degrees Celsius would have blitzed the bees.

A handful of scientists have used the fossil record, or rather the lack of it, to suggest the asteroid impact did not act alone and might not even have been a major player in dinosaur extinction. Nearly all experts on the subject disagree with that minority view however.
Ms.Kozisek's work was presented to the Geological Society of America in Denver. [Published in The Scottish Beekeeper Courtesy of BEES]

5. November Meeting

We are unable to book a room at Shirehall for this month's meeting, so instead we will meet in the biology labs at Shrewsbury School. Brian Goodwin has provided the following directions:

Enter the school grounds from the top of Port Hill. To find this easily go to Radbrook College but continue towards Shrewsbury Town centre, over the traffic island for approx. 500 yards. The school entrance is at the top of a steep hill, on the right, through wrought iron gates. Continue straight ahead for 100 yds until road goes uphill and winds to the left. Turn left at top of hill and the meeting is in a room in the buildings on the left. The route will be signposted.

Dave Sutton, the Acting Bee Diseases Officer for the Western Region, will be speaking on the theme of 'Another way of looking at disease'. Dave always provides us with considerable food for thought and expert advice so give yourself plenty of time to find the venue and be at this meeting.

Dave also wrote this note for Ludlow BKA's Newsletter recently: Spotted in an old copy of the Daily Mirror (2004), a pullout entitled 'Weird Ways to make some Extra Cash'. Among numerous suggestions, such as selling your hair, renting your drive for parking, taking part in police line-ups, nude life modelling, etc. there was this little gem:-

"Bee Keeping - If you've got a big garden, get in touch with a local bee-keeping association and sign up for a course. You could make a few thousand pounds each year for a start-up cost of £300."