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Marin Anastasov talk: Nutritional requirement and supplemental feeding Nutrition is a basic biological need and the pre-requisite for a healthy and productive colony. Carbohydrates provide bees with the energy for flight, movement and heat, while protein, fats, vitamins and minerals are needed for the growth, function and development of the colony. This talk will cover the importance of different nutrients to both individual bees and to the colony and will look at the different types of feed required at different times of the year. It will describe when, how, and what to feed bees, the different types of food available, and the various types of feeders. Please note Head Office will be shut after hours on the night of the talk, so if you are having problems logging on to Zoom, please email events@bbka.org.uk as this Inbox will be monitored up until the start of the event. Please remember that you must have pre-registered first. About Marin Anastasov, NDB Marin ...

Enhance your association activities and extend your educational programme by booking a speaker. Tips for looking after your speakers:  Make contact with potential speakers well in advance, many are booked up to a year ahead. Send your speaker a reminder a week or so before, with clear directions and map on how to find the venue. Check your speaker's equipment needs. If your speaker is travelling a long distance, be prepared to provide accommodation/ dinner costs. Provide a parking space as close to the venue as possible. Don't forget to send a note of thanks. Speakers' Directory

Dr Nicholas Balfour and colleagues at Sussex University were recipients of funding from BBKA in 2018 for an unusual and interesting project on building an online data base of pollinator interactions.  This is intended to be open access when it becomes active (hopefully later in 2020) so that anyone can search it for any plant and any pollinator.  Lockdown has slowed up the completion of this work but the group have managed to prepare a paper for publication and there is a description of the work here. The Database of Pollinator Interactions (DoPI) The importance of flower-insect interactions in maintaining global biodiversity, ecosystem resilience and agricultural output is well established. However, significant concerns remain about pollinator and plant populations declines and shrinking distributions. For example, more than 40 British bee, wasp and butterfly species have become extinct in the last two centuries 1. While many potential causes have been identified, the ...