On Friday 9th October we wished our President Johanna well on her maternity leave, our VP’s (Beki & Lisa) are stepping up to run the next couple of meetings alongside Julie, all being well Jo will be back in charge of the pink glitter clipboard in Feb!
What a night to take over: normal business; birthday celebrations; calendar reveal; birthday presents; cake and loads of visitors !
As my first official night with the clipboard I was excited to introduce Andrew a hobbyist bee keeper! What a sight we must of been all sitting staring at him wearing our tiaras!
This year has BEEn packed with bee friendly gardening and the opening of our centenary project Bee Garden, so it was lovely to meet someone as passionate about bee health and well being as we are! Andrew has a hive in his garden containing a minimum of 10,000 bees!
We heard about the month to month activities of the hive, in October they are typically preparing for winter, as a bee keeper it is important to ensure that rain water or small rodents cant get into the hive. The hive population would be dropping as the drones leave to hive to die elsewhere, the queen is laying fewer and fewer eggs.
Andrew outlined to community structure of the hive: there are 3 main types of bee which occupy a hive. At the “top of the tree” is the Queen. The queen is identified by her abdomen, which is significantly larger than any other bee in the hive. Central to the hive, the queen is supported by thousands of female workers – the “worker bee” and, in the summer, hundreds of male drones. The function of the drone bee is to compete for mating with the queen and only about 20 or so will succeed.The queen mates only once and holds sufficient sperm from the male drones to lay eggs for 3-5 years. Sadly for the drone bee, he dies in the process! Drones (the male bee) do no work and in the early autumn they are evicted by the workers and die.
Looking more at life inside a beehive, it is possible to tell three different types of wax cell used for eggs. Andrew passed around old frames from his hive so we could touch, smell t and see the wax cell arrangements.
In the smallest cells (5mm diameter) the queen lays fertilised eggs, which in 21 days produce the female worker bees essential to keeping the colony fed. In larger cells (7mm diameter) unfertilised eggs are laid which in 24 days become the male drone bees.
The most curious of all the cells in the hive is that which is used to produce new queens. Colonies typically construct up to 20 wax queen cells which are acorn-like and hang vertically downwards and a colony producing queen type cells warns the bee keeper of an impending swarm.
A thoroughly fascinating insight into the life of bees, sadly no one wanted to demonstrate the honey bee waggle dance and we ended with some honey tasting.
Saying our goodbyes and thanks to Andrew we settled down for the true business of the evening! Our party! A quick cup of tea and a change of the seating arrangements, paying thanks to our first president and founder Gemma we cut the cake. A stunning Jam jar made by member Karen.
For a few short seconds a never before heard hush descended as we tucked into the beautifully rich jam filled Maderia cake – Thank you Karen! In Jam tradition a gift for all members and visitors from the committee for just being awesome fun women! This year a fabulous Jam Branded pen – no more excuses not to sign in!
In true 4 year old birthday style we played pass the parcel – layers of paper revealing either a WI fact, random question, monthly meeting titles (still second Friday of the month), master class titles (still last Sunday of the month) introducing our new subgroups – ‘Jammie Hookers our crochet group from ‘terrified to terrific’ meeting the 1st Thursday of the month and Jammie Doggies our 3rd Sunday of the month dog walk around the park.
Let's Make Jam 
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