OKEHAMPTON Beekeepers held their last get-together before the Okehampton Show at Will and Kay Pyne’s apiary in Sticklepath on July 25.

Will has ten colonies housed in deep national brood boxes.

His bees had recently been checked by West Devon’s seasonal bee inspector Martin Hann and had received a clean bill of health earlier in July.

The purpose of the afternoon’s activity was to administer a varroa treatment, Bee Vital Hiveclean, to those hives not involved with honey extraction.

This involved opening up six of the ten colonies and dribbling 20ml of Hiveclean liquid into the brood chambers of each colony.

After looking through the six colonies the meeting adjourned to Will and Kay’s garden to enjoy a bring and share tea.

Glyn Berrington had brought with him a refractometer for testing the moisture content of honey and kindly offered to test Will and Kay’s harvest.

The result, 14.5% showed exceptionally low water content so a good strong honey.

Suzanne Maxwell showed examples of Asian hornets which had been trapped and killed in France.

These insects are darker and smaller than Britain’s own native hornet and prey on honeybees.

They also possess the ability to squirt venom at attackers.

The normal beekeeping veil is no defence against this and the venom can temporarily blind the victim.

This alien species has destroyed many colonies of honeybees in France.

There have, more seriously, been several human fatalities. Fortunately so far the Asian Hornet has not crossed the channel, but it is thought to be just a matter of time.