Rhona Toft’s Winter’s Talk

Our second winter talk was from Rhona Toft, Master Beekeeper and was entitled Seeking Varroa Resistant Bees. Rhona explained that she has around 60 colonies and was inspired by feral colonies and mite resistance. Rhona talked us through the process that she had followed and the reasons behind her decisions and process. This was a riveting talk and something that a lot of our Association were very interested to learn more about. Once again, some many facts were revealed about honeybees and it’s amazing to learn how many skills and facets these wondrous insects have. We learnt that some bees have a better sense of smell than others and that these are the ones who can identify the presence of varroa mites in the sealed cells. Once again, questions and further discussion was encouraged at the end and this talk has sealed our inspiration to monitor more and see if we can achieve a treatment free environment in some of our training apiary.