Speaker Meeting, 6.15 for 6.30pm

Mon, Aug 2nd 2021 at 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm

Speaker: President Kathy, talk entitled “Getting the Buzz”


Club members please log in for more information.

President Kathy certainly has the buzz when it comes to bee-keeping. She’s been keeping bees for 10 years and regularly presents day-long taster sessions for novices. Kathy told us her talk would be a very much slimmed-down version of her Taster Day presentation.

Way back 4,500 years ago the ancient Egyptians kept bees in simple hives and collected the honey. Jars of honey have been found in pharaoh tombs. During the medieval period monasteries were busy beekeepers, making beeswax for candles and honey for mead. However, it was not until the 18th century that hives were designed that enabled the harvesting of honey without destroying the colony.

Beekeepers keep bees to collect honey and other products such as beeswax, propolis and royal jelly. Propolis is a resinous mixture collected by honey bees from tree buds or sap which they use to seal up open spaces in the hive. Royal jelly is a secretion used to nourish the larvae and is thought by many people to have health benefits.

A colony of bees consists of a queen bee, thousands of female worker bees, and thousands of male drones. The queen bee is the only sexually mature female in the hive and all the workers and drones are her offspring. The queen can live for 3 years or more and can lay some half a million eggs in her lifetime. Eggs are laid singly in a cell in a wax honeycomb, produced and shaped by the worker bees.

At the height of summer when activity in the hive is frantic the life of a worker bee may be as short as 6 weeks. Worker bees co-operate to find food and use a pattern of dancing, known as the waggle dance, to communicate information with each other. For the first few weeks of their life they perform basic chores within the hive: cleaning empty brood cells, removing debris and other housekeeping tasks, making wax for building or repairing comb, and feeding larvae. Later, they ventilate the hive or guard the entrance. Older workers leave the hive daily, weather permitting, to forage for nectar, pollen and water. Drones do not work or forage; they have no other function than to mate with new queens.

All colonies are totally dependent on their queen, the only egg-layer. She can choose whether or not to fertilize an egg as she lays it; if she does so, it develops into a female worker bee; if she lays an unfertilized egg it becomes a male drone.

Kathy’s very comprehensive talk included a great deal more information than space permits here. If it was a taster of a taster day then this brief report is merely an amuse bouche. Contact Kathy if you are interested in keeping bees, she would be more than happy to help you.

'What We Do' Main Pages:

The world stands on the brink of the complete eradication of Polio. With your help we can end this dreadful disease for ever. Together we can make history

more  

A Partner Club is a Rotary club that supports ShelterBox's work in disaster relief by donating over £2,000 in a Rotary year

more  

24th October is World Polio Day

more  

From Rotary Club local heats to national finals, Rotary Youth Competitions in a range of creative areas let young people’s skills flourish.

more  

Brighter Futures launched their Radiotherapy Appeal in 2015. Today, 7 years later, a ribbon cutting ceremony has taken place at the Great Western Hospital

more  

£1286 has been sent from our Emergency Disaster Fund to the Disasters Emergency Committee UKRAINE HUMANITARIAN APPEAL

more  

Rotary’s second major donation, of £208,000, was handed over on 7th July 2021 when local Rotarians visited the Great Western Hospital to view the build progress of the nearly completed radiotherapy unit.

more  

A brief summary of our Rotary year ending 30/06/2023

more  

Giving money and support to the people in Swindon & district who need it most

more  

We went to the races in March. It was a meeting with 10 races, 8 riders in each. It wasn’t at Epsom, or Haydock Park, or just up the M4 at Newbury. It was, of all places, in Wanborough Village Hall.

more  

"In musical entertainment Swindon punches way above its weight. Some of the youngsters we've heard tonight will go on to make a name for themselves"

more  

The Rotary Club of North Wiltshire (the name was changed to the Rotary Club of Swindon North in 2008) received its charter from Rotary International on 28th September 1966

more  

Rotarian Terry Williams' remarkable and unique fund raising effort, living in a ShelterBox emergency tent for a week in the Market Place, Highworth

more