The Swindon  Honeybee Conservation Group 'Save the Honeybee' Project

There has been much in the media 

 recently about Ron Hoskins, the beekeeper from Swindon who is said to have bred a 'wonder' bee.  The truth is even more exciting.  Read an article by Tom Henheffer by clicking here.

Ron Hoskins, Founder, President and Chairman of the Swindon Honeybee Conservation Group, has been a beekeeper for 67 years.  He has more hands on knowledge of honeybees than most.  He has been a member of the British Beekeepers Association Executive Committee, is Vice President of the Wiltshire BKA, and is President of Swindon & District BKA. 

A founder member of the Bee Instrumental Insemination Group (BIIG), he has spent the last 12 years evaluating and developing hygenic bees, and through experimentation and practical hands on experience has selectively bred healthy hygenic bees - which are able to deal with the varroa mite without man's intervention, and without the use of chemicals.

He has put together the 'Save the Honeybee' project - which seeks to build on this groundbreaking work by disseminating this healthy bee gene pool across the country and beyond.

Please click here and here for further information on this wonderful project, and how you may be able to help.

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Read Ron Hoskin's thought-provoking excerpt from one of his lectures on the storage of pollen in the hive......

'The picture of multi-coloured pollen, though pretty, suggests to me another story. I dug into several cells to prove it was all of the same pollen and not just the top layer being different. Each cell contains its own pollen type, more or less.

Question: "Why have the workers bothered to store each type of pollen seperately?"

Answer: I feel it is probably because each has either a different quality or taste. During the hours of daylight and fine weather a BLEND of incoming pollens will be given to the bee larvae and the surplus will be stored until required, seperately apparently, not as a blend.

Question: "What happens during the hours of darkness or inclement weather when the bees cannot fly out?"

Answer: They feed their larvae from the stored pollen.

Question: "Is that a problem?"

Answer: It may well be. The bees have stored pollens seperately for some reason so they may well be using ALL OF ONE TYPE first, and if any one of them had been collected from a plant species that had been treated with systemic inseticide, then they would be unwittingly poisoning the whole of the next generation.

Could this be a reason for winter losses? ........'