Dave Bonner’s Winter’s Talk

This was our first winter talk in our lovely new venue of Sutton Coldfield Town Hall. It was delivered by Dave Bonner, Master Beekeeper, with around 40 people in attendance. It was titled Honeybee Democracy based on the work of Professor Tom Seeley. It included a fascinating insight to the behaviour that is followed pre and post the swarming process. It provided amazing insight into the selection process that the bees go through to find a new home for the swarm including the studies of how they calculate the internal capacity of the proposed dwelling. Multiple scout bees would be in charge of heading out to select possible locations and then have to return to the rest of the bees to communicate the features and suitability via a waggle dance. Fascinating footage was shown of when the bees would ‘vote against’ the scout bees by headbutting them multiple times, including a specific beeping noise, during their communication dance. It truly was a magnificent insight into how the bees work together and was superbly delivered by Dave who also encouraged questions and discussions after the talk.