Chairmans Letter – October 2020

It is just amazing how fast a year passes when you are not enjoying yourself with these COVID restrictions on almost all our club activities.  But it is that time of year again and now we have our AGM as a Zoom meeting – who would have believed that if I had gazed into my crystal ball and told you last year that things would be so different.  Well, we will move forward as best we can and be positive about all the good and interesting beekeeping things that can happen to you as members of KBKA during the next year.

Firstly may I thank our excellent KBKA committee, especially our pre-retiring member Dick Church, who has done so much for education within the club and our retiring member Sarah Benson for all her hard work in presenting our Association at different clubs and fetes. Dick will be easing the passing of the education baton over to Emma Morley during the course of the coming months by guiding Emma through the important role of Education Officer. The position for fetes and fairs co-ordinator is still vacant, please let us know if you are interested. Thank you also to our excellent Apiary Managers, Mark, Patrick and David who have had a rather lonely life with this lockdown and few club apiary sessions.  Then there is our Treasurer, William, who has put a lot of time and effort into preparing us to become a registered charity.  We are not quite there yet, but during the coming year we hope to call a special meeting and formalise a new constitution and become a charity, thus allowing us to claim back tax.  Watch this space. A big thank you to Sian for keeping our website up to date and for getting our photo competition up on the website (Have you had a look – there are some really good photos.) You will all know Sophie, our membership secretary, she has the job of checking that we have all paid and filled in the membership form correctly, and she does this with great patience and humour – not getting cross at our mistakes!  Lastly, but by no means least, is Elaine who is just the most efficient club secretary I could ever wish for.  She holds us all together and remembers everything that needs to be done. It is because of these people that we have the Association we have, and I wish to publicly thank them all.

I am very aware that because of the virus we are not able to be the club we wish to be.  The social side of KBKA is really one of the most important aspects of being a member, it is where you meet your nearest beekeeping neighbour. With that in mind I do assure you that as soon as we are allowed and it is safe to do so, we will hold lectures and meetings where we can all meet up.

As there has not been any Wiltshire Bee and Honey Day this year we are thinking about possibly running our own honey stall at a local market or farmers market. If you have any honey or bee products to sell do let Elaine know so she can gauge what we would have available. If there are enough of you with supplies, we will look to putting something together.

I am really please to announce that junior membership will be free again this year.  There is also an EARLY BIRD discount for members who renew by 1^st Nov 2020  This is a one-off gesture of goodwill in recognition of the difficulty in holding regular face-to-face club meetings during lockdown. Future club meetings will be held either by Zoom (or similar) or at Bishops Cannings Village Hall (or similar).

AHAT –  The Asian Hornet Action Team would like to encourage you all to monitor you hives for the hornets. This is the best time of year to be doing this, so it really means sitting on a chair and watching you hive entrances for about an hour.  Asian Hornets can also be on a hedge of flowering ivy.  On a sunny flowering ivy bush you will be amazed just how many insects you will see.  I feel that the Asian Hornet is always much blacker than its European relative and it will be seen predating on insects, or honeybees on the ivy.  Find a nice chair,  wrap up warm and go and watch for an hour – it will help us all. Of course if you do see anything, photograph it if you can, and report it.

     Our Zoom AGM is on Wednesday 7^th October 2020.  Thank you to all who have confirmed they will be there – we should be at quorate for the meeting – you are all welcome as it is your Association and your committee need to hear from you if there is something important you wish to discuss.  Also the KBKA photographic competition winners will be announced at the AGM and competition voting will close on 30^th Sept 2020. If you have not yet voted, get in quick and do it now!  Just a reminder the meeting joining details are shown below and if anyone wants a practice run beforehand contact Elaine at ElaineLewis@hotmail.co.uk