Beekeeping Today Podcast - Presented by Betterbee
Beekeeping Today Podcast
Beekeeping Today Podcast
The podcast for the latest beekeeping news, information and entertainment for today's beekeeper. Hosts Jeff Ott and Becky Masterman bring you conversations with researchers, beekeepers and industry leaders to help you become a more informed and knowledgeable beekeeper.
Sept. 7, 2026

A Conversation with Beekeepers Quarterly (401)

Beekeeping challenges rarely stop at national borders. This week, Jeff and Becky cross the Atlantic for a conversation with Dr. Andrea Quigley and Norman Carreck, co-editors of the UK-based Beekeepers Quarterly.

Norman, a longtime beekeeper and bee scientist, introduces listeners to the UK’s extensive beekeeping education system and his work conserving the native dark European honey bee, Apis mellifera mellifera. The conversation explores what locally adapted honey bees can teach beekeepers about genetics, winter survival, colony size, temperament, and management.

Andrea then takes us inside Beekeepers Quarterly, an independent, internationally focused magazine published by Northern Bee Books. She explains how the quarterly combines practical beekeeping, science, conservation, and perspectives from contributors around the world.

The discussion also turns to two emerging threats with international implications: Tropilaelaps mites and the yellow-legged hornet. Norman and Andrea explain why early detection, understanding pest biology, and cooperation among researchers, government agencies, beekeepers, and the public matter—and what North American beekeepers might learn from the European experience.

It’s a wide-ranging conversation offering a decidedly international perspective on honey bees, beekeeping, research, and the challenges ahead.

Websites from the episode and others we recommend:

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We’d like to thank Vita Bee Health for supporting the podcast. Vita provides proven tools for controlling Varroa—from Apistan and Apiguard to the new VarroxSan extended-release oxalic acid strips—helping beekeepers keep stronger, healthier colonies.

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We hope you enjoy this podcast and welcome your questions and comments in the show notes of this episode or: questions@beekeepingtodaypodcast.com

Thank you for listening!

Podcast music: Be Strong by Young Presidents; Epilogue by Musicalman; Faraday by BeGun; Walking in Paris by Studio Le Bus; A Fresh New Start by Pete Morse; Wedding Day by Boomer; Christmas Avenue by Immersive Music; Red Jack Blues by Daniel Hart; Bolero de la Fontero by Rimsky Music; Perfect Sky by Graceful Movement; I'm Not Running Away This Time by Max Brodie; Original guitar background instrumental by Jeff Ott.

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Copyright © 2026 by Growing Planet Media, LLC

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WEBVTT

00:00:00.160 --> 00:00:05.040
This is Jacob and Sarah from For Bees Sake in California.

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And this is the Beekeeping Today Podcast.

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Welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast presented by Betterbee, your source for beekeeping news, information, and entertainment.

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I'm Jeff Ott.

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And I'm Becky Masterman.

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Today's episode is brought to you by the bee nutrition superheroes at Global Patties.

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Hey, a quick shout out to Betterbee and all of our sponsors whose support allows us to bring you this podcast each week without resorting to a

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Be sure to check out all of our content on the website.

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There you can read up on all of our guests, read our blog on the various aspects and observations about beekeeping, search for, download

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You can find it all at www.

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beekeepingtoday.

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com.

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Thank you, Jacob and Sarah from For Bees Sake There, California.

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I think, aren't they about our first opener from California?

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Well I'd have to check the map, but I we don't have a lot of openers from California.

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No th well thank you, Jacob and Sarah stopping by our booth at North American Honey Bee Expo back in January.

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And uh for leaving us that opener.

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I'm looking forward to this year's North American Honey Bee Expo.

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Becky.

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Are you packed yet?

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You know, I was going through I was going through some things and I said I need to make sure I take that to Louisville.

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You are thinking about it.

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That's fantastic.

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Well, I saw I s w honestly I saw the uh tablecloth for Okay for our table and I said, I gotta make sure I don't And then I looked at it and I said, Oh well that was for the m first

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Long story.

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Don't I have the tablecloth?

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Yeah, you have the current tables.

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So I should start looking for it now so that I have it readily available.

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Yes, that would be good.

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That would be good.

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In January.

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Okay.

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We have a plan.

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Well, we'll have a very busy North American honey bee expo this year.

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Right, right.

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It's going to be a lot of a lot of fun teaching a short course to beginners and talking to

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Everybody who walks by our booth, whether they want to talk to us or not.

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That's right.

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Hey you!

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Hey you, come over here.

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I want to talk to you.

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Well, we also have the release of our book that we should have.

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Oh, I forgot about that.

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Oh, you forgot about that.

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Oh my gosh.

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Trying to block that out, but yay, that's exciting.

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That's very

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It is very exciting.

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Uh it was a long year last year for many reasons, not one of which was writing, and it's gonna be out next January and it'll be a fun experience at North American Honey Bee Expo.

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We better get there early and stay late.

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It'll be a great expo.

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Yeah, that's right.

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And with no snowstorms.

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It's about done with honey harvest.

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Uh most beekeepers in North America had your honey harvest

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go this year.

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It's it was a great harvest.

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It was a good year for our bees and it means little feeding for the winter too.

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So I'm I'm looking forward to that.

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mixed bag here so it was not the worst not the best is just it is what it is and that's uh that's beekeeping but the bees are looking really good I'm very happy about that

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That's good.

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Yeah, the honey harvest is it's hard to predict some years what's going to happen.

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And here if if uh we haven't had a lot of rain, so we did miss out on some of that.

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Oops, I can't cut the alfalfa honey, which is always fun to collect because it's it's so copious if they can't get in there and cut, but they didn't have any problem this year.

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But but it is it is interesting talking to beekeepers across the country and hearing, you know, it it varies year to year.

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Weather is so important as far as making that that nectar available.

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Today's guests are Dr.

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Andrea Quigley and Norman Carreck.

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They're co-editors of the UK-based Beekeepers Quarterly.

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Publication.

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Is this an episode of our podcast or is this a meeting with you and your editors?

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Because you write for Beekeepers Quarterly.

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I just want to know what I'm getting into.

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If they start lambasting me for being late on my articles, then it's

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I guess it's turned into a production meeting.

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Okay, I'll just I'll just kind of sit back then and have you enjoy it.

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Enjoy it?

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Wait a minute.

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What?

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But

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How long have you been writing for Beekeepers Quarterly?

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Not too long.

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I think maybe two seasons, season and a half.

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Yeah.

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That's a little bit

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And that Beekeepers Quarterly is put out by Northern Bee Books.

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Northern Bee Books, yes.

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And this year they received from Apimondia, or actually in 2025, they received

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the gold medal award for best general beekeeping magazine in the UK.

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So that's pretty prestigious for an Apimondia.

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Fantastic.

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So we'll be talking to Dr.

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Andrea Quigley and Norman Carreck right after these words from our sponsors.

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For more than forty five years, Betterbee has proudly supported beekeepers by offering high quality

00:05:38.960 --> 00:05:50.800
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00:05:50.800 --> 00:05:53.360
Based in Greenwich, New York, Betterbee

00:05:54.039 --> 00:05:57.479
Serves beekeepers all across the United States.

00:05:57.479 --> 00:06:08.039
Whether you're just getting started or a seasoned pro, Betterbee has the products and experience to help you and your bees succeed.

00:06:08.960 --> 00:06:10.000
betterbee.

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com or call 1-800-632-3379.

00:06:16.639 --> 00:06:20.000
Betterbee, your partners in Better Beekeeping

00:06:23.060 --> 00:06:26.819
We'd like to thank Vita Bee Health for supporting this podcast.

00:06:26.819 --> 00:06:36.259
Vita provides proven tools for controlling Varroa, Apistan, and ApiGuard to the new VarroxSan extended release oxalic acid strips.

00:06:36.460 --> 00:06:39.819
Helping beekeepers keep stronger, healthier colonies.

00:06:39.819 --> 00:06:49.419
Hey everybody, welcome back, sitting around this great big virtual beekeeping today podcast table, and we have this stretched across the Atlantic.

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Sitting in the UK as Norman Carreck and Dr.

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Andrea Quigley.

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Welcome to Beekeeping Today.

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Hello.

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Hello.

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We're so happy that you joined us.

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This is always very exciting to have guests from different countries because we're about to learn a lot, I bet.

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Well we're really pleased to be here.

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Very good.

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You have your fingers on the pulse of beekeeping in the UK.

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Both because you're beekeepers and you enjoy bees and you've been in bees and beekeeping for a long time in the UK

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but also your editors co-editors of the Beekeepers Quarterly.

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So let's talk a little bit about what is the Beekeepers Quarterly and what do you do there?

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Oh well actually

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Yeah, before we get to that, I'm jumping ahead of the script here.

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Do you want just to introduce ourselves first?

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Yeah, that's a great idea.

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Why don't you introduce yourselves?

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Jeff is just so excited to start talking about the Beekeepers quarterly that he's gonna skip over who you are.

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He's just written fantastic things and money fraud for me, so you should be pleased.

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Let's get to Jeff's articles.

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No, I'm kidding.

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I'm kidding.

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Okay, I'm Norman Carreck.

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I've been a beekeeper since I was fifteen, so quite a few years ago.

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And I've also been

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uh professional bee scientist for about 35 years and uh have had a number of roles at Rothamsted Experimental Station.

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at the International Bee Research Association and at the University of Sussex and uh now as a consultant.

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Uh so I've worked on a

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range of different topics over the years from pollination of plants to bee behavior including

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Working on harmonic radar bee pathology, working on Varroa and viruses and various other things

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And now I suppose I'm sort of mainly interested in conservation of honey bees, particularly our native black British honey bee, and working with many scientists around the world through the COLOSS Association.

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And I'm Andrea Quigley.

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I'm married to Norman.

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I started out as a plant scientist.

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I went into finance because there were no jobs in plant science at the time.

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And eventually took up beekeeping somewhat later.

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I kept bees now for twenty years and I refuse to do anything other than my basic exam.

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That's the fact you need to know is I have my my basic proficiency badge and I refuse to do any more exams because being married to Norman

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I know the stuff.

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I don't need to prove it to anyone.

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Could you take a step back because I saw that that Norman has the highest possible designation?

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But wait, could you maybe explain to our listeners about this system and what that means and what beekeepers have to do and maybe how many levels there are?

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Yeah, so in the in the UK over the years a system of beekeeping education and exams has has built up.

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So we have the

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British Beekeepers Association, which confusingly really just covers England.

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And they have an exam system.

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So it starts off with though that there's actually a junior

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certificate for children and then for grown-ups there's the basic certificate that you should be able to take after you've kept bees for about a year or so which is like a driving license

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And then they have a modular system of theoretical exams and practical exams.

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And if you do all of those, which will take you a number of years

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you can you become a master beekeeper and you get lots of certificates and so on.

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And then above that

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There's a qualification that I'm involved in called the National Diploma in Beekeeping, which was set up about 60, 70 years ago.

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as a qualification for county beekeeping lecturers when there were such things.

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At one time every county had an agricultural college.

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and every agricultural college taught beekeeping and had a county beekeeping lecturer and so it was a qualification sort of approaching degree level that was intended for them.

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But

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Sadly, with cutbacks, one by one agricultural colleges stopped doing beekeeping and the lecturers uh retired or were made redundant.

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But the need for

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qualifications remains and so this national diploma in beekeeping continues to sort of train the trainers and we held our exams a couple of weeks ago and

00:11:28.060 --> 00:11:41.580
are pleased that two very good candidates passed it and can now call themselves NDBs and they will go out I mean they already go out and give lots of talks, they write articles in magazines

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and, you know, perform an important role in teaching others how to teach beekeeping.

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That's excellent.

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So there are very few of these NDBs.

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roaming the colonies.

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Sadly, yes, yes.

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And quite a number of them are are quite elderly, so it's good to have two younger people join us.

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You mentioned the conservation efforts for the black bee.

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Can you tell us a little bit about what distinguishes that from the typical western honey bee that we're so familiar with?

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Yeah, so

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Naturally, the honey bee of northwestern Europe, including Britain and Ireland, France, Germany, and you know the Low Countries, was

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the original type species of honey bee, Apis mellifera mellifera, as described by Carl von Linné, and you know it was present

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throughout those those countries, but from really the middle of the nineteenth century onwards

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people became convinced that other strains of bee were better and in particular people in northern Italy developed techniques for rearing lots of queens.

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and so Italian bees and then Carniolan bees and Caucasian bees and a whole range of other subspecies began to be exported all over the world, including of course to the United States

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And people in in Britain jumped on the bandwagon and wanted to buy Italian bees and so on.

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And many many thousands came in.

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And then more than a hundred years ago there was a very serious disease

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which at the time was caused called the Isle of Wight disease, spread across Britain and Ireland, and many colonies died

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and m many imports took place of particularly Italian and Carniolan bees, such that

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you know, much of England anyway, is a very great mixture of different strains of bee and

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lots of people believed that the original black bee had completely become extinct.

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And of course we had brother Adam at Buckfast Abbey down in Devon, who developed the Buckfast Bee, which was a hybrid

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which he developed because he thought it was, you know, better and resistant to this Isle of Wight disease.

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And he in particular was was very keen to say that the black bee had completely disappeared.

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And many people believed him.

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But then after the Second World War there were a few people that thought, Well, that can't be true.

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And they realized that in various parts of the country there were what they called near native bees that were possibly a bit of a mixture, but

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had characteristics of the old native bee and they started conservation efforts, particularly using wing morphometry.

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They were

00:14:48.279 --> 00:14:52.120
convince themselves that they'd found native bees.

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colours, colour, it doesn't necessarily mean anything, but that these wing morphometrics seem to be pretty effective ways of following the genetics, how they're being expressed.

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And then when modern molecular genetics techniques came in, people were able to confirm that there were indeed some

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black bees left.

00:15:18.720 --> 00:15:27.200
So particularly in Ireland, most of the bees in Ireland are pretty pure apis mellifera mellifera.

00:15:27.040 --> 00:15:32.640
although they are very worried about imports of others and that's a slightly separate story.

00:15:32.800 --> 00:15:34.880
But then you have to go right over

00:15:35.520 --> 00:15:42.400
to the Ural Mountains in Western Russia before you find pure black bees again.

00:15:42.400 --> 00:15:47.200
And over most of their range they've been largely replaced.

00:15:47.200 --> 00:15:49.440
So in Germany they had

00:15:49.839 --> 00:15:58.000
black bees but decided they didn't like them and replaced them with carniolan bees and in France they've had a great mixture.

00:15:58.140 --> 00:16:02.140
And these black bees just exist in in pockets.

00:16:02.140 --> 00:16:06.700
But work that's being done in Britain and Ireland shows that

00:16:07.120 --> 00:16:18.320
Certainly in remote places there are plenty of near-native bees still existing, so up in Scotland, parts of Wales and the southwest of England.

00:16:18.320 --> 00:16:31.520
So earlier in the year I was able to go to a little island off the coast of Scotland called Colonsay, which has pure black bees, and the beekeeper there, Andrew Abrahams, has been

00:16:31.820 --> 00:16:41.420
fighting for well, fifty years to preserve them and actually managed to get legal protection for his bees a few years ago.

00:16:41.420 --> 00:16:43.660
So it's now illegal to keep

00:16:43.839 --> 00:16:47.519
any other strain of bee on these two Scottish Islands.

00:16:47.519 --> 00:16:56.319
Currently working with beekeepers on the Scilly Isles, which are off the extreme southwest corner.

00:16:56.140 --> 00:17:02.700
uh of England and we're looking at the bees there to see what they are and there's some interesting work going on.

00:17:03.100 --> 00:17:07.580
What I find interesting is that when you look at them um genetically

00:17:07.839 --> 00:17:14.720
It's surprising just how much Apis mellifera mellifera have survived in what look like really mixed bees.

00:17:14.720 --> 00:17:16.559
They've got really mixed parentage.

00:17:16.559 --> 00:17:16.799
But

00:17:17.419 --> 00:17:22.699
the conditions are such they're still those genes were there for a reason and they're still being selected.

00:17:22.699 --> 00:17:28.539
So that's why we would say always go for locally adapted bees, because those are the ones best fit for your environment.

00:17:28.539 --> 00:17:30.780
So we can't really do that because

00:17:31.419 --> 00:17:34.380
All of our bees are non-native or honey bees.

00:17:34.380 --> 00:17:36.940
So so it's an interesting conversation.

00:17:37.020 --> 00:17:44.940
It it is it is true that your bees are, you know, not native, but they've been there quite a few hundred years and there are a few papers

00:17:45.220 --> 00:17:52.980
Are beginning to show that there are actually locally adapted bee populations in various parts of North America

00:17:52.960 --> 00:18:00.400
I mean obviously the majority of the bees that commercial people use that are moved around the country are, you know

00:18:00.740 --> 00:18:11.060
have a quite a limited range, but in other parts of the country there are locally adapted bees and there's there's a few papers out there that show some interesting results

00:18:11.240 --> 00:18:16.520
So I think people probably need to look a bit more closely and they'll find.

00:18:16.520 --> 00:18:19.560
I mean, the question is how long does it take

00:18:19.740 --> 00:18:27.660
a bee to become locally adapted and if you've got a very severe selection pressure, that can actually be be quite rapid.

00:18:27.660 --> 00:18:31.580
So if there are particular extreme conditions, the bees will

00:18:32.200 --> 00:18:34.440
you know, will have to evolve quite quickly.

00:18:34.760 --> 00:18:37.480
I'm in Minnesota, so we have pretty harsh winters.

00:18:37.480 --> 00:18:42.040
But I find that as long as I'm not asking the question of whether they can survive

00:18:42.340 --> 00:18:44.740
in a in a tree hollow.

00:18:44.740 --> 00:18:51.059
But I find that as long as I give my Italians three deeps to store enough honey and my Caucasians

00:18:51.440 --> 00:18:52.799
just want one deep.

00:18:52.799 --> 00:19:03.200
I mean as long as I look at what they want for nesting, then I can be pretty successful with with wintering them depending upon regardless of their genetics.

00:19:03.140 --> 00:19:13.860
But I have to ask, your your preference for the native bees, is it is it because of that conservation question, or do you like managing them better than

00:19:14.419 --> 00:19:16.820
Gentle Italians where you don't need gloves.

00:19:17.140 --> 00:19:21.220
I think most of I mean the interest is in in various parts.

00:19:21.220 --> 00:19:25.220
I mean obviously there's an argument for conserving

00:19:25.919 --> 00:19:30.400
whatever kind of insect or plant or whatever for its own sake.

00:19:30.400 --> 00:19:38.559
But I think there is a r a realization, particularly in Ireland, I think, where the bees are relatively uniform

00:19:39.120 --> 00:19:51.120
that those bees are probably very well adapted to the Irish conditions and indeed I was involved in a project a couple of years ago for the Irish government assembling information

00:19:51.440 --> 00:19:54.080
from all sorts of different places.

00:19:54.080 --> 00:20:01.039
And colleagues in Ireland have brought together a lot of genetic information showing that

00:20:01.320 --> 00:20:12.840
there seem to be unique genotypes in Ireland that aren't found elsewhere in the Apis mellifera mellifera population in Europe.

00:20:12.820 --> 00:20:21.140
and looking at various morphometric characteristics, they find that the Irish bees are slightly different.

00:20:21.240 --> 00:20:22.280
from the other.

00:20:22.280 --> 00:20:33.400
So they're furrier, they um, you know, have quite a number of different characteristics which seem to be adaptations to the climate.

00:20:33.400 --> 00:20:33.720
So

00:20:34.620 --> 00:20:39.100
You know, th there's a good reason why bees are are different in different places.

00:20:39.100 --> 00:20:44.620
And one of the interesting things in England where there have been so many imports over the years

00:20:45.140 --> 00:20:54.340
is that you have this basic sort of backbone of the bee population is the native bee mixed up with everything else.

00:20:54.340 --> 00:20:59.860
And I suspect a lot of the exotic genes are actually being selected out.

00:20:59.660 --> 00:21:07.900
and that if you didn't if you left everything alone, they would probably revert to something much closer to to the original B.

00:21:07.900 --> 00:21:13.340
And of course a further argument is when people are trying to select for

00:21:14.280 --> 00:21:22.200
tolerance and resistance in a particular area, that will be upset if somebody brings in

00:21:22.260 --> 00:21:25.780
exotic bees from somewhere else that are not resistant and so on.

00:21:25.780 --> 00:21:29.700
So there are quite a number of different arguments that all come together.

00:21:29.940 --> 00:21:32.660
And then of course there are the arguments about

00:21:32.860 --> 00:21:38.620
dise pests and diseases being directly brought in from outside on imported bees.

00:21:38.620 --> 00:21:47.659
And as an island, you know, the bee the British Isles do have some protection that's, you know, not there in a in in a big continent.

00:21:47.720 --> 00:21:51.160
So yeah, these are these issues are are quite current.

00:21:51.240 --> 00:21:53.880
I'm just curious though I'm gonna ask one more question on this.

00:21:53.880 --> 00:22:00.600
The Apis mellifera mellifera have a little bit of a reputation as far as their their defensiveness

00:22:00.540 --> 00:22:09.500
So is that something you are happy to work with for the sake of keeping them, or is that something that you actually enjoy?

00:22:09.500 --> 00:22:11.660
Yeah, you're you're absolutely right that

00:22:11.760 --> 00:22:17.120
Apis mellifera mellifera has a reputation for for being bad tempered.

00:22:17.120 --> 00:22:20.559
But what I can say is that the pure bees I

00:22:21.040 --> 00:22:27.920
saw and Colonsay earlier in the year are incredibly well behaved and peaceful.

00:22:28.080 --> 00:22:35.760
Uh and you know, we weren't we weren't wearing veils or gloves or or or anything and they were absolutely fine.

00:22:35.660 --> 00:22:46.700
And part of the problem, of course, is that hybridization between strains can lead to bad temper, but the chances are if you cross black bees with

00:22:46.940 --> 00:22:54.779
Italian bees, the offspring will look quite black, but because of hybrid big vigour may be very bad tempered.

00:22:54.779 --> 00:22:57.100
And so I suspect a lot of the

00:22:57.780 --> 00:23:06.020
reputation for bad temper is actually bees that have become hybridized, but it's not obvious just looking at them.

00:23:06.020 --> 00:23:07.140
So there's there's

00:23:07.540 --> 00:23:09.620
Quite there's there's more for this than meets the eye.

00:23:09.860 --> 00:23:17.620
When I started beekeeping some twenty years ago, we were all told as beginners, Oh get a nice Italian queen should be lovely and I kid you not.

00:23:17.620 --> 00:23:20.500
They would mate with the local drones which were

00:23:20.820 --> 00:23:29.540
British mongrels of some form or description and they were vicious at her daughters were vicious and with just

00:23:30.179 --> 00:23:32.340
Actually easier not to do that.

00:23:32.340 --> 00:23:37.460
It was easier just to use the local mongrels because they were so much better mannered.

00:23:37.539 --> 00:23:39.779
They were much easier to work with.

00:23:39.820 --> 00:23:44.540
That's just anecdotal, that's not eviden evidence that you could say that's really hard takeaway evidence.

00:23:44.540 --> 00:23:50.140
But my experience is local mongrels, the crossbreeds, the hybrids, they're not good.

00:23:50.140 --> 00:23:51.740
They're not good to work with.

00:23:51.740 --> 00:23:52.700
Interesting

00:23:52.660 --> 00:23:56.180
And are they a little bit smaller than, say, the Italian bee?

00:23:56.260 --> 00:23:59.700
Yes, and they make much smaller nests.

00:23:59.700 --> 00:24:05.860
So people who love huge colonies of bees and vast amounts of honey

00:24:06.019 --> 00:24:13.700
are disappointed by them, but in poor seasons they produce honey and

00:24:14.340 --> 00:24:17.460
you know, store it and do really well.

00:24:17.460 --> 00:24:26.980
Whereas Italian bees and so on may collect lots of honey, but then they go on brood rearing late in the season and turn it all into brood

00:24:27.040 --> 00:24:30.640
and you then have to feed them to get them through the winter and so on.

00:24:30.640 --> 00:24:34.880
So they they do need a slightly different way of managing them.

00:24:35.120 --> 00:24:49.760
But, you know, there are certainly commercial beekeepers in Scotland and in northern England who use native bees because they, you know, survive much better in the fairly harsh conditions.

00:24:49.460 --> 00:24:55.940
Hey, let's take this opportunity to take a quick break and we'll come back and continue our conversation with Andrea Norman.

00:24:55.940 --> 00:24:57.140
We'll be right back

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00:26:30.480 --> 00:26:32.399
Welcome back everybody.

00:26:32.399 --> 00:26:34.720
Okay, I have to ask

00:26:34.980 --> 00:26:37.140
Does Jeff turn his articles in on time?

00:26:37.460 --> 00:26:40.900
Hey, you said you weren't gonna ask that question, Becky.

00:26:42.180 --> 00:26:43.540
Not fair.

00:26:43.279 --> 00:26:45.039
I'm gonna end up.

00:26:45.200 --> 00:26:46.240
Okay.

00:26:46.240 --> 00:26:48.240
We always have time for friends.

00:26:48.240 --> 00:26:52.559
I tell you what, I would rather quality a day late.

00:26:52.580 --> 00:26:55.380
Than something that's rushed and not great.

00:26:55.380 --> 00:27:00.900
And you know, I've just we've just been putting to bed today the latest edition of the quarterly.

00:27:00.960 --> 00:27:03.840
And Jeff's piece on honey fraud.

00:27:03.840 --> 00:27:06.080
We we shared some ideas about that.

00:27:06.080 --> 00:27:09.600
It was a really useful and really interesting article.

00:27:09.600 --> 00:27:12.320
And yeah, the next issue is going to be a good one.

00:27:12.060 --> 00:27:19.100
Yes, I did I did get to take a peek of that and that was I said that was I was impressed with with that story.

00:27:19.100 --> 00:27:20.140
I will give

00:27:20.600 --> 00:27:27.720
due credit to Becky and my wife for editing helping me w make that a little bit smoother than I wrote it.

00:27:27.720 --> 00:27:29.240
So I appreciate that.

00:27:29.240 --> 00:27:33.240
I think your wife got to it before I did 'cause it was pretty smooth once I saw it.

00:27:33.240 --> 00:27:34.679
But tell us

00:27:35.140 --> 00:27:37.700
Tell us about No, it was it was it was fantastic.

00:27:38.820 --> 00:27:42.980
But but I would like to say the quarterly, could you tell us

00:27:43.140 --> 00:27:48.980
W what goes into an issue and a little bit about maybe some of your regular contributors?

00:27:48.980 --> 00:27:51.940
So the quarterly is produced four times a year.

00:27:51.940 --> 00:27:55.620
It's sixty pages of facts

00:27:56.260 --> 00:27:59.299
News, used articles on the world of beekeeping.

00:27:59.299 --> 00:28:04.179
It's a UK produced magazine, a beekeeper-led magazine, an independent.

00:28:04.179 --> 00:28:08.899
It's produced by Northern published by Northern Bee Books, their family but wrongness.

00:28:08.660 --> 00:28:09.860
wholly independent.

00:28:09.860 --> 00:28:14.100
We as editors are given the privilege of being wholly independent as well.

00:28:14.100 --> 00:28:15.940
So we choose what goes in.

00:28:15.940 --> 00:28:23.460
And we haven't got anyone that we have to necessarily answer to if we think that that article or story should go in there.

00:28:22.560 --> 00:28:26.720
That's a huge provision and not something shared by many magazines.

00:28:26.720 --> 00:28:30.800
We have a truly international range of contributors.

00:28:30.560 --> 00:28:35.600
And my heart goes out to people to send in copies because we are nothing without them.

00:28:35.600 --> 00:28:43.040
We won the World Beekeeping Award 2025 at Apimondia for the best journal beekeeping magazine.

00:28:42.460 --> 00:28:45.980
And that is due to the work of our contributors.

00:28:46.060 --> 00:28:50.540
I say jokingly I'm the content editor, normal is the

00:28:50.640 --> 00:28:53.600
technical editor and it there's a little bit more to it than that.

00:28:53.600 --> 00:28:57.200
But I go around sort of asking people, will you give me something on this?

00:28:57.200 --> 00:28:59.920
I've got regular contributors like Jess.

00:28:59.640 --> 00:29:05.800
In the States we had Jeremy Barnes and Tara Chapman from Texas who written write for us.

00:29:05.800 --> 00:29:09.960
And so they bring a wealth of experience and different ideas to

00:29:10.240 --> 00:29:12.640
the table, which is really valuable.

00:29:12.640 --> 00:29:18.720
We have writers from as far afield as Russia, Canada.

00:29:18.980 --> 00:29:24.020
Australia, we have a number of reporters from Australia, which is a very interesting place right now.

00:29:24.020 --> 00:29:30.820
They've they're coming to terms with Varroa and it's been a huge hit for them because of course they already had small hive beetle and they're just discovering that

00:29:30.860 --> 00:29:38.779
Small hive beetle and Varroa is a terrible combination, something I'm sure you guys know about, but it's it's news to us because we don't have the small hive beetle.

00:29:38.779 --> 00:29:41.100
And long may that remain the case.

00:29:41.100 --> 00:29:41.419
But

00:29:42.200 --> 00:29:46.760
Yeah, it's we have a lot of international contributors, we've got them across Europe.

00:29:46.760 --> 00:29:51.160
We're always looking for more because that keeps it interesting and alive.

00:29:51.140 --> 00:29:52.180
That's exciting.

00:29:52.180 --> 00:29:55.540
That's diverse voices for for one publication.

00:29:55.540 --> 00:29:57.860
How long has the quarterly been published?

00:29:57.860 --> 00:29:58.740
Forty years.

00:29:58.740 --> 00:30:00.660
Just over forty years now.

00:30:00.260 --> 00:30:10.100
It's our third third year now since we took over from John Pitts, who originated the magazine with Jeremy Burbage at Northern Bee Books.

00:30:09.980 --> 00:30:17.820
And so when we took over, we were very keen to maintain that high quality of content and images.

00:30:17.820 --> 00:30:23.340
And he's had they've had some really famous names right for them over the years.

00:30:23.120 --> 00:30:28.400
And so we were very lucky to inherit that history tradition really.

00:30:28.400 --> 00:30:33.520
Um, but what we wanted to do, the first thing we wanted to do was just refresh the magazine so that it was

00:30:34.080 --> 00:30:41.679
really suitable for the digital age so you can read it comfortably online and look fresh and modern and that was the first our first task really was

00:30:41.640 --> 00:30:44.440
just updating the look and the feel of the magazine.

00:30:44.440 --> 00:30:46.680
And that was something that was an absolute joy.

00:30:46.680 --> 00:30:50.040
So we start off with Four Wing, which is basically all the news and

00:30:51.100 --> 00:31:00.139
hot stock hot topics of the day, the science section is great because we're both trained scientists, but science is great but only if you understand it.

00:31:00.139 --> 00:31:01.820
And I'm really keen that

00:31:02.220 --> 00:31:03.660
it's accessible to people.

00:31:03.660 --> 00:31:05.420
People can take it and understand it.

00:31:05.420 --> 00:31:09.500
Because things like the waggle dance, you think there's that surely everything's known about that.

00:31:09.500 --> 00:31:10.220
That's not the case.

00:31:10.220 --> 00:31:12.380
We just had a new article in this month

00:31:12.260 --> 00:31:15.220
about the waggle dance, something new they've discovered.

00:31:15.220 --> 00:31:19.620
And to put it in terms that people can understand is really valuable.

00:31:19.620 --> 00:31:22.740
And we take a lot of work from young researchers

00:31:22.860 --> 00:31:29.340
who are making their first inroads into public communication, which is really exciting for them and for us.

00:31:29.340 --> 00:31:32.059
And I've had so many different stories.

00:31:31.940 --> 00:31:37.700
from people working in Latin America, people working with elephants is coming in soon.

00:31:37.700 --> 00:31:39.539
And it's just like, wow.

00:31:40.179 --> 00:31:40.659
Very cool.

00:31:41.059 --> 00:31:42.980
Working with elephants and honey bees?

00:31:42.980 --> 00:31:43.940
What's the connection there?

00:31:43.940 --> 00:31:45.059
This is intriguing.

00:31:45.059 --> 00:31:46.659
Oh, there's a connection.

00:31:46.360 --> 00:31:54.279
Yeah, so elephants are a problem because in many places people are building their villages and homes where elephants used to live.

00:31:54.279 --> 00:31:57.799
And so they are scared of bees.

00:31:57.560 --> 00:31:59.800
And so people say, oh we'll just play recordings of bees.

00:31:59.800 --> 00:32:00.600
That'll be fine.

00:32:00.600 --> 00:32:01.960
Elephants are not stupid.

00:32:01.960 --> 00:32:04.840
They realized the recordings of bees were just recordings.

00:32:04.840 --> 00:32:06.520
And carried on.

00:32:06.440 --> 00:32:11.799
But of course, the places where elephants live are often places where people are poor and need a good income.

00:32:11.799 --> 00:32:16.840
And beekeeping's a role often fulfill fulfilled by women in those countries.

00:32:16.480 --> 00:32:25.600
And so it gives them an opportunity to earn income and keep bees, make honey, sell the honey for their families to make an income, but also

00:32:25.960 --> 00:32:29.720
Elephants don't like bees, so their homes don't get trampled anymore, their fields don't get trampled.

00:32:29.720 --> 00:32:31.000
It's a win-win.

00:32:31.000 --> 00:32:32.680
And so there's a lot of work going on in that.

00:32:32.760 --> 00:32:34.040
It's really exciting.

00:32:34.260 --> 00:32:35.940
It makes a difference in Google Lives.

00:32:36.260 --> 00:32:37.059
That's really good.

00:32:37.059 --> 00:32:37.700
Thank you.

00:32:37.700 --> 00:32:42.020
Yeah, we are different from other magazines, partly because our international outlook

00:32:42.220 --> 00:32:53.660
But also because we can do deep dives into subjects where other people have to cover certain things every month or every quarter and we were we're just like, Oh, this is gonna be our yellow-legged Asian hornet special or

00:32:53.840 --> 00:32:58.400
Oh, we've got this world exclusive on Tropilaelaps, and we'll just focus in on that.

00:32:58.400 --> 00:33:01.200
And so that's that's something that makes us a little bit unique.

00:33:01.200 --> 00:33:02.880
We don't have the children's corner

00:33:02.700 --> 00:33:11.899
And we don't do stuff for beginners, but what we do do is stuff for anyone who really cares about bees, conservation, their cul the culture around them.

00:33:11.899 --> 00:33:15.580
We just ranged into whatever is interesting to us

00:33:15.660 --> 00:33:18.620
And we think, well, that interests other people.

00:33:18.620 --> 00:33:23.580
Your reactions tell us the interests of the people, uh our reports and everything that we get back.

00:33:23.580 --> 00:33:26.780
I mean, top scientists read this as well as beekeepers.

00:33:26.780 --> 00:33:27.580
It's um

00:33:27.760 --> 00:33:29.919
It's a privileged position, we're very lucky.

00:33:30.559 --> 00:33:36.640
Well, I always assumed it was it was really geared towards UK beekeepers, but

00:33:36.560 --> 00:33:44.720
With everything that you're telling me, it sounds like you probably have an international audience and it would be of great interest to people from all over the world.

00:33:44.720 --> 00:33:45.200
We do.

00:33:45.200 --> 00:33:49.760
We've been following the story of the closure of the bee labs at Beltsville very closely.

00:33:49.519 --> 00:33:53.279
And also Tropilaelaps, which is a big threat too.

00:33:53.279 --> 00:33:59.679
And we had a world exclusive from the team who wrote Tropilaelaps at the gate of your apiary

00:33:59.760 --> 00:34:02.640
um just explaining some of the new techniques they had discovered.

00:34:02.640 --> 00:34:04.559
That is not just of interest to the UK.

00:34:04.559 --> 00:34:09.200
That is of global significance because that is the next next big threat.

00:34:08.940 --> 00:34:15.500
And in fact, one of the articles in this next issue is from Maggie Gill, who's a member of that team.

00:34:15.500 --> 00:34:17.899
Don't know if you've spoken to Maggie yet.

00:34:17.820 --> 00:34:27.659
But she is she's been out to Tajikistan and she said she was giving this talk and at the end of this talk this guy brings up his comb and says, Can you have a look at it?

00:34:27.359 --> 00:34:29.839
And lo and behold, let's Tropilaelaps on it.

00:34:29.919 --> 00:34:32.240
She's just like they're going, Oh yeah, we've had it for ages.

00:34:39.139 --> 00:34:43.299
ref read paper, but the beekeepers were saying, Oh yeah, and they've been around for a while.

00:34:43.460 --> 00:34:46.980
And and this is the problem that I think

00:34:47.260 --> 00:35:01.980
you know, I first heard about Tropilaelaps many years ago and we said, Oh, that's going to be the next worst thing after Varroa and it's going to be spreading and then it didn't look as though it was spreading very much and it all went rather quiet.

00:35:01.420 --> 00:35:13.340
But what was actually happening during that time is it was spreading between countries but nobody noticed because it's often been very remote countries

00:35:13.540 --> 00:35:23.300
often politically unstable places where news doesn't get in or out very much and you know, beekeepers have been moving

00:35:24.120 --> 00:35:38.280
you know, colon three hundred thousand colonies from Uzbekistan to southern Russia and then they noticed that all the bees were dying, so they imported some more and it's only after the thing has

00:35:38.820 --> 00:35:43.300
too well established to do anything about that somebody realizes what's wrong.

00:35:43.300 --> 00:35:48.340
And so of course the scientific world is trying to catch up and

00:35:48.980 --> 00:35:59.140
officially record where this thing is, but it's it's almost certainly more extensively spread than than we officially know about.

00:35:59.140 --> 00:36:00.740
And there are, you know

00:36:01.200 --> 00:36:12.560
many countries which are now under suspicion and then you see that this country has beekeeping links with that country and it's very easy for the for the thing to move between them.

00:36:12.560 --> 00:36:12.880
And

00:36:13.420 --> 00:36:20.620
Governments tend to wait until there is an official report in the refereed scientific journal before they'll

00:36:21.220 --> 00:36:32.020
ban imports from that country or take any action, but you actually need to be proactive and sort of read between the lines and talk to local beekeepers and so on.

00:36:32.020 --> 00:36:32.420
And it

00:36:32.559 --> 00:36:42.960
You know, we're talking about Tropilaelaps now, but the same story occurred with Varroa 30 years ago and all these pests and and the sad thing about

00:36:43.420 --> 00:36:50.700
all the spread of all these pests is that it's essentially exactly the same story repeating itself over and over again.

00:36:50.700 --> 00:36:57.260
And a f a few years ago I was at a conference in Italy about Asian hornets and

00:36:58.020 --> 00:37:08.420
You had people from countries where it's now well established, places where it's just arriving, and places it hasn't yet got to.

00:37:08.620 --> 00:37:14.620
and people from all these countries gave a little report on what they were doing and what the state of play was.

00:37:14.620 --> 00:37:16.940
And it suddenly struck me that actually

00:37:17.140 --> 00:37:20.339
everyone was ex saying exactly the same thing.

00:37:20.339 --> 00:37:28.020
It's simply that different countries are different places down and an inexorable sequence of events.

00:37:28.180 --> 00:37:38.660
Where, you know, first of all scientists say this is important, we need to do something about this, and the government says we don't have any money to do anything about it.

00:37:38.460 --> 00:37:49.420
And then of course it gets to a country and then everyone wants to rush to find a solution and throws all this money that they claim they didn't have at it.

00:37:49.340 --> 00:37:53.260
And it it's very reactive rather than proactive.

00:37:53.260 --> 00:38:02.860
And all the basic scientific research understanding the biology of, you know, how far do small hive beetles fly, you know, the reproduction of

00:38:03.040 --> 00:38:11.360
Asian hornets and all these kinds of questions, uh a lot of the really basic biology isn't well understood and so

00:38:11.820 --> 00:38:20.300
these scientists who are working out in Southeast Asia on Tropilaelaps are finding some really basic information about the biology that

00:38:20.640 --> 00:38:22.640
just isn't in the books and so on.

00:38:22.640 --> 00:38:30.559
And unfortunately means that it's much more of a p potential problem than we thought it was, for example

00:38:30.820 --> 00:38:41.780
the books said that Tropilaelaps requires active brood and therefore can't exist in countries which are really cold in the winter and where the colonies have

00:38:42.140 --> 00:38:47.099
No food, but we now know that's not true, which makes it much more dangerous.

00:38:47.099 --> 00:38:51.980
So yeah, it's it's important to study the basic biology of these things.

00:38:51.940 --> 00:39:05.780
You brought up the subject of the yellow legged hornet, and I know that is something that's been deviling parts of your country and recently in the United States they've announced that it's established

00:39:05.740 --> 00:39:07.660
in the state of South Carolina.

00:39:07.660 --> 00:39:13.340
What's the UK doing about the yellow-legged hornet or not doing perhaps?

00:39:13.340 --> 00:39:15.580
What can we learn from what you're doing?

00:39:15.660 --> 00:39:18.380
Yeah, so it's obviously something that's

00:39:18.700 --> 00:39:30.300
been of concern for for many years as you know it established itself in southern France and has since spread to Spain and northwards and eastwards and so on

00:39:30.260 --> 00:39:43.700
And so when it reached northern France some years ago, it was obviously only a matter of time before it gets here because the southeast corner of England is only twenty six miles

00:39:43.840 --> 00:39:48.480
uh across the English Channel from the northern French coast.

00:39:48.480 --> 00:39:51.440
So it's very easy for it to get across.

00:39:51.440 --> 00:39:52.400
So the first

00:39:52.640 --> 00:40:00.960
yellow-legged Asian hornets were found in Britain in twenty fourteen, not on the coast, but

00:40:01.240 --> 00:40:13.000
a long way in land in the sort of west of England, just a nest, and over the next few nest years odd nests popped up in different places

00:40:13.420 --> 00:40:22.700
And then during the sort of COVID pandemic where there was less cross channel traffic, the numbers sort of declined a bit.

00:40:22.460 --> 00:40:30.220
So that would suggest to you that these were wasp hornets that were hitching a lift in the back of somebody's car or on a truck or something.

00:40:30.220 --> 00:40:34.540
Yeah, so they've been found in crates of vegetables

00:40:34.740 --> 00:40:37.060
all sorts of places and so on.

00:40:37.060 --> 00:40:47.620
So there are many different ways they can get in and of course coming in on a lorry within hours they can be almost anywhere in the in the country

00:40:47.500 --> 00:40:52.780
But of course in South East England they can directly fly across the channel.

00:40:52.780 --> 00:40:55.100
And so over the last few years

00:40:55.520 --> 00:41:08.000
The number of nests in Kent and East Sussex, which are the counties nearest to France, there have been many, many nests, and the numbers of

00:41:08.400 --> 00:41:10.160
increased dramatically.

00:41:10.160 --> 00:41:22.000
The current policy has been to destroy any nests that are found, but that's rapidly becoming manageable, so we're at the next phase of thinking, well

00:41:22.240 --> 00:41:23.760
what happens next.

00:41:23.760 --> 00:41:36.960
And so in the past our bee inspectors have carried out trapping in the spring, but this year they decided that they didn't have the resources to do that over most of the country.

00:41:36.520 --> 00:41:46.119
But in in areas where, you know, there's just one one nest, probably the next spring it is worth looking around there.

00:41:46.119 --> 00:41:47.640
But unfortunately in areas

00:41:48.120 --> 00:41:53.240
like Kent and East Sussex, it seems to be fairly well established.

00:41:53.240 --> 00:41:55.320
And very recently some

00:41:55.740 --> 00:42:07.580
genetic studies have been done by a PhD student based at the our National bee unit showed that you can actually trace back some of these nests of 2022

00:42:07.840 --> 00:42:18.720
So it's actually been established here for for several years and it sounds like you've got the same situation in Georgia and South Carolina and so on, unfortunately.

00:42:18.460 --> 00:42:21.180
What's been interesting is there's been a lot of publicity.

00:42:21.180 --> 00:42:32.540
A lot of people they've had the Asian Hornet Watch where you can literally use an app on your phone, take the photo, um, tell tell the people at n the non native agency where it was and they would

00:42:32.540 --> 00:42:35.660
basically pile on in there, but that's changing.

00:42:35.660 --> 00:42:40.140
And that's a similar situation as you see on the continent in mainland Europe as well.

00:42:40.140 --> 00:42:45.020
And we have a regular correspondent who lives in Brittany, which is in France

00:42:44.859 --> 00:42:48.460
So they have a lot of problems with Asian horn yellow legged Asian Hornet there.

00:42:48.460 --> 00:42:57.740
And he is saying that for him and his uh fellow beekeepers, the best thing he can do is spring trap because they can try and get the queens early

00:42:57.559 --> 00:43:03.319
so that come the autumn their colonies are not devastated by the numbers of hornets.

00:43:03.319 --> 00:43:12.279
So it it seemed to me that what we're doing here seemed wrong when I hear what's happening in mainland Europe where they're they're more established.

00:43:12.240 --> 00:43:21.680
So we wait to see and it may be that the local beekeeping associations who manage a h an Asian Hornet Watch system, they have teams

00:43:21.760 --> 00:43:34.720
who go out and look for these hornets and h help the government people, that maybe they are the people who will guide us going forwards into what we need to do month on month through the year as these hornets come.

00:43:34.540 --> 00:43:42.780
The dig biggest problem that we have is we have our own European hornet, which is a docile creature, which is not a major problem for bees.

00:43:42.780 --> 00:43:45.020
And it's often caught

00:43:45.420 --> 00:43:47.660
And labelled as the baddie actually.

00:43:47.660 --> 00:43:48.060
Yes.

00:43:48.060 --> 00:43:48.620
And it's not.

00:43:48.620 --> 00:43:49.180
So there's a thing.

00:43:49.340 --> 00:43:56.540
But people are going around destroying these native hornets which are supposed to be here and calling that a uh yellow legged Asian Hornet.

00:43:56.540 --> 00:43:58.540
Clearly the nests are being destroyed

00:43:58.359 --> 00:44:02.839
by the government authorities are Asian Hornets and there's no two ways about it.

00:44:02.839 --> 00:44:07.800
But equally the well meaning members of the public don't necessarily get the difference.

00:44:07.660 --> 00:44:10.540
They're just a oh it's a hornet and the hor the hornet.

00:44:10.540 --> 00:44:15.420
When you mention members of the public, do you have any information about

00:44:15.820 --> 00:44:19.260
the public actually interacting with these hornets.

00:44:19.260 --> 00:44:24.460
Are there sting incidents or information that you have about about how they impact non-beekeepers?

00:44:24.780 --> 00:44:30.460
So the the public have been very good at reporting sightings.

00:44:29.980 --> 00:44:39.580
So we have a uh an a government body that's responsible for non-native species and yellow-legged Asian hornets come into their

00:44:40.120 --> 00:44:47.720
their uh remit and so if you see a suspect in insect you can take a photograph

00:44:47.660 --> 00:44:57.740
and upload that to their website and they triage those and they're developing AI recognition that should speed up that process and so on.

00:44:57.740 --> 00:45:00.540
So many reports are coming in from the public

00:45:01.000 --> 00:45:06.120
And we've also learnt a huge amount from the island of Jersey.

00:45:06.120 --> 00:45:14.440
So Jersey is one of the Channel Islands between France and Britain is actually closer to France than to

00:45:14.940 --> 00:45:15.900
than to Britain.

00:45:16.140 --> 00:45:27.820
And they've had hornets also since twenty fourteen, but being an island very close to the French mainland, they have huge numbers of hornets.

00:45:27.660 --> 00:45:38.300
And the local beekeepers association have developed a huge amount of expertise and they've worked with the government authorities, the health authorities, the

00:45:38.740 --> 00:45:48.420
fire and rescue services, members of the public, the local press, the local radio and so on, and raised a huge amount of awareness of it.

00:45:48.340 --> 00:45:56.100
They've done a lot of basic biology, they've done a lot of learning how to trap these things and so on.

00:45:56.100 --> 00:45:56.420
And

00:45:56.920 --> 00:46:07.240
many of the bee inspectors from the UK have gone over to Jersey and a lot of amateur beekeepers have gone over to learn techniques and so on.

00:46:07.240 --> 00:46:09.960
Um and on Jersey it all seems to work very

00:46:10.620 --> 00:46:15.100
well because it's a small island and a small community and so on.

00:46:15.100 --> 00:46:19.740
Trying to translate that to a much larger country is more difficult.

00:46:19.740 --> 00:46:21.180
But we do need to get

00:46:21.340 --> 00:46:26.620
all the different authorities and beekeepers and the public to work together.

00:46:26.700 --> 00:46:36.060
It has to be said the BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation, has actually done on local television, local radio, a fantastic job working with local beekeepers.

00:46:35.640 --> 00:46:40.279
to make the public aware of what's what the risks are, what they should be looking for.

00:46:40.359 --> 00:46:43.160
Yes you mentioned stinging incidents and

00:46:43.720 --> 00:46:53.559
touchwood, I don't know of any major stinging incidents in the UK yet, but on Jersey they certainly have been

00:46:53.960 --> 00:47:01.160
a number of near misses with nests and unfortunately in France and Spain there are fatalities every year.

00:47:01.160 --> 00:47:03.000
And one of the problems is

00:47:03.620 --> 00:47:07.700
the Hornets like living in urban areas.

00:47:07.700 --> 00:47:17.060
So a really good case study is Santiago di Compostela in northwest Spain, where the urban

00:47:17.799 --> 00:47:22.119
environment has phenomenally high numbers of nests.

00:47:22.119 --> 00:47:28.200
And because it's a warm place, the houses tend to have nice overhanging eaves to uh

00:47:28.460 --> 00:47:33.260
shade the houses which are perfect for the hornets to nest under.

00:47:33.260 --> 00:47:35.900
They do have a lot of problems with

00:47:36.320 --> 00:47:40.160
members of the public coming into contact with hornets.

00:47:40.160 --> 00:47:46.000
We haven't yet had nests in the London area, but they're right on the edge of it.

00:47:46.000 --> 00:47:48.720
So I suspect this summer there will be nests

00:47:48.940 --> 00:47:54.540
in uh maybe the outer parts of London and it will be interesting to see what happens.

00:47:54.540 --> 00:47:56.619
Well we have that to look forward to, Becky.

00:47:56.619 --> 00:47:57.099
I know.

00:47:57.099 --> 00:47:59.020
Ask a happy question, Jeff.

00:48:00.060 --> 00:48:01.820
When's my next article do it?

00:48:01.820 --> 00:48:02.380
No.

00:48:02.240 --> 00:48:07.680
Uh Norman and Andrea, it's been great finally having you on that podcast.

00:48:07.680 --> 00:48:12.720
I look forward to having you back and maybe we can make it a regular, at least if not an annual.

00:48:12.820 --> 00:48:23.220
Occasion to have you back and bring us up to date what's going on in the UK and what uh our listeners can find in the Beekeepers Quarterly that will should interest them as well.

00:48:23.220 --> 00:48:24.580
Thank you for joining us.

00:48:24.580 --> 00:48:25.460
It's a pleasure.

00:48:25.460 --> 00:48:26.020
Thank you very much.

00:48:26.340 --> 00:48:26.740
Thank you.

00:48:26.740 --> 00:48:27.220
Thank you so much.

00:48:27.580 --> 00:48:29.660
It was just a pleasure meeting you.

00:48:30.620 --> 00:48:37.740
Well that was great talking to Norman, Andrea, and even Chloe got her a couple barks in.

00:48:37.820 --> 00:48:42.380
There I think there was a toy incident somewhere in the middle of that.

00:48:42.420 --> 00:48:43.140
But that was fun.

00:48:48.420 --> 00:48:52.020
And did we mention in the recording that they're married and they were together?

00:48:52.020 --> 00:48:52.340
Yes.

00:48:52.340 --> 00:48:52.900
I think we did.

00:48:54.640 --> 00:49:00.880
So I'm I'm really impressed, Jeff, because you write for a quarterly that has an international audience.

00:49:00.880 --> 00:49:02.240
Is that on your resume?

00:49:02.559 --> 00:49:04.720
No, no, I don't think it is.

00:49:04.720 --> 00:49:06.480
I haven't actually maintained a

00:49:10.540 --> 00:49:14.140
Actually it is out in uh my bio in the website.

00:49:14.140 --> 00:49:16.380
No, Beekeepers Quarterly, I've always

00:49:16.460 --> 00:49:23.980
Years ago, Kim Flottum introduced me to him and he was friends with Jeremy and the whole Northern Bee Books world.

00:49:23.980 --> 00:49:27.180
And I know Kim participated in the National Honey Show.

00:49:27.440 --> 00:49:30.079
and was very well known in the UK.

00:49:30.079 --> 00:49:35.359
So Kim had introduced me to the Beekeepers Quarterly years ago and it's a fine publication.

00:49:35.359 --> 00:49:40.000
And I encourage our listeners, if you're looking to expand your

00:49:40.620 --> 00:49:46.700
your knowledge and get a different perspective because I the US based publications are great.

00:49:46.700 --> 00:49:48.460
We're very lucky to have

00:49:48.440 --> 00:49:50.200
to main publication to choose from.

00:49:50.200 --> 00:49:55.880
But if you want to have a different perspective, a different voice, I encourage you to check out Beekeepers Quarterly.

00:49:55.880 --> 00:49:57.320
Not just because I write for it.

00:49:57.340 --> 00:50:00.140
I was gonna say so you're saying an additional perspective.

00:50:00.460 --> 00:50:03.900
So they should keep their subscriptions to Bee Culture and American Bee Journal.

00:50:03.900 --> 00:50:04.220
Absolutely.

00:50:04.220 --> 00:50:06.380
So go ahead, add your third to Beekeepers Quarterly.

00:50:06.620 --> 00:50:07.020
Absolutely.

00:50:07.020 --> 00:50:09.180
And I know that Bee Culture has

00:50:09.320 --> 00:50:10.520
Great authors.

00:50:10.520 --> 00:50:14.520
Oh oh by the way, you write for Bee Culture, don't you, Becky?

00:50:14.520 --> 00:50:15.640
Have I said it yet?

00:50:15.640 --> 00:50:16.520
Six years.

00:50:16.520 --> 00:50:17.000
Six years.

00:50:17.880 --> 00:50:21.560
I talked to the editor the other day and I said, Are you tired of reactor?

00:50:22.299 --> 00:50:22.859
Six years.

00:50:22.859 --> 00:50:24.299
That's well, congratulations.

00:50:24.299 --> 00:50:25.099
That's great.

00:50:25.099 --> 00:50:25.900
Ah, yes.

00:50:25.900 --> 00:50:28.859
When and Jim too, he he's been writing for them.

00:50:28.859 --> 00:50:32.140
Well, he was writing for them even before Kim started.

00:50:31.660 --> 00:50:32.700
as editor.

00:50:32.700 --> 00:50:33.020
Yes.

00:50:33.020 --> 00:50:40.060
We we should ask Jim when we get together with him just how long he's been writing for some of these these magazines.

00:50:40.060 --> 00:50:41.180
That's fantastic.

00:50:41.180 --> 00:50:45.100
Well thank you Andrea and Norman for joining us today.

00:50:44.859 --> 00:50:48.859
And that about wraps it up for this episode of Beekeeping Today.

00:50:48.859 --> 00:50:56.460
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00:50:56.460 --> 00:50:59.579
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00:51:07.700 --> 00:51:13.300
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00:51:12.740 --> 00:51:22.100
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00:51:22.100 --> 00:51:26.020
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00:51:26.020 --> 00:51:27.460
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00:51:27.740 --> 00:51:30.380
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00:51:30.380 --> 00:51:31.740
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00:51:31.740 --> 00:51:33.500
Thanks again, everybody

Dr Andrea Quigley Profile Photo

Editor Beekeepers Quarterly

Andrea has kept bees "for fun" for over 20 years. She holds the BBKA Basic Assessment in beekeeping competence and refused to do any more exams because she is married to bee scientist Norman Carreck NDB (the highest UK beekeeping qualification).

Together with Norman, she edits The Beekeepers Quarterly, which won the Apimondia 2025 Gold medal for best general beekeeping magazine.

As a freelance writer, she writes regularly for several beekeeping journals on plants for bees and all aspects of bees and beekeeping.

She co-authored The Bee: a Natural History and has adapted US beekeeping books so they suit the British beekeeper, including The Beekeeper’s Problem Solver by Jim Tew.

She wrote the successful children's book "What on Earth? Bees" which was translated into several languages.

Over the years she has written numerous items for various Facebook pages including the International Bee Research Association – IBRA, Carreck Consultancy, Apoidea Press, etc.

A keen gardener and lover of nature and the environment, Andrea brings her background in agricultural botany to bear on her understanding of beekeeping. Her interest in bees is wide ranging and covers all types of bees.

Norman Carreck Profile Photo

Bee scientist and Editor of The Beekeepers Quarterly

Norman Carreck has kept bees for 46 years and has been a bee research scientist for 35 years.

He is joint editor of the Beekeepers Quarterly, a director of Carreck Consultancy Ltd and Bee Publishing Ltd and is based at the University of Sussex, UK.

Norman has been a member of the Executive Committee of the international honey bee research network "COLOSS" for many years.

He has lectured about bees on all continents where bees are kept, written many scientific papers, book chapters, conference contributions and popular articles, and edited several books. Most recently, Sustainable Honey Bee Breeding, a Scientific Guide for Future Beekeeping.

He has regularly appeared in the media in many countries.

His research interests have been extensive, covering conservation of honey bees, pollination ecology, bee behaviour, bee pathology and forage for bees. He has spent almost as much time working on non apis bees and other pollinators as honey bees.

Over the years, he has been Science Director of the International Bee Research Association, and Senior Editor of the Journal of Apicultural Research, having started out at Rothamsted Research, UK.

He is married to Dr Andrea Quigley.