Aston and District W.I. September Report

We were welcomed to the meeting by our president Glenys Inight for the first of our autumn/winter afternoon sessions, and after the usual housekeeping and information sharing we settled back to listen to a talk about bees given by Isabel Large, a local beekeeper.

Isabel outlined how her interest in bees had started at a young age having read the book Dancing Bees as an A level student but that it wasn't until 13 years ago following a bee keeping course at Reaseheath college that she began to keep her own hives.

Isabel gave us a fascinating talk, we learnt about the role each bee has in the hive from the queen, to the worker bees, to the drones and how the production of honey can be affected by so many external factors such as the weather, availability of food sources, pesticides and predators as well as internal problems in the hive such as infection and overcrowding.

We had the chance to taste some locally produced honey and compare it to some supermarket produce and are now all more aware that we need to read labels before purchasing honey, buying local will guarantee you have an authentic product which tastes delicious.

Isabel stressed how important Bees are to the ecosystem, a new threat to them being the Asian hornet, from one single queen, colonies have built up in Europe wiping out large quantities of hives and they have made it into the Uk...Aston and District WI members are all now aware of how to spot one and report it for the experts to help eradicate them.

We finished our session with tea,cake and chat and look forward to meeting next month to hear Joanna Williams talk about The Great Miss Lydia Becker at 2pm on October 4th in Broomhall and Sound community room.

Our walking group will meet at 10:30 at the Lion in Malpas on Wednesday 11th Sept.

Luncheon club will meet on Friday 13th September at 12 for 12:30 at The Bhurty in Aston.

New members and guests are always welcome, keep a look out for information on our facebook page.

report written by Vicky Kershaw