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With the bees now dormant we can all sit back a bit and enjoy each other's company in convivial surroundings wearing comfy clothes - not bee suits.

I am referring to two events coming up in the next few weeks and one for next year.

The first is a talk by Kevin Pope. If you have not heard Kevin speak before let me tell you he is always entertaining and very knowledgeable. The talk is on Wednesday 19th November at the Colliton Club in Dorchester at 7pm. He will be talking about Tropilaelaps. If you don't come for any other reason then it is worth turning up to hear how to pronounce it!

Tropilaeplaps is a pest which is smaller than varroa, moves faster than varroa and breeds faster than varroa. Some say it is a bigger threat to our bees than varroa. If you want to know more then be there on Wednesday - it will be worth listening to.

The other upcoming event to which I should draw your attention is the Christmas Social. This too will be at the Colliton Club but on Thursday 4th December. Again this is an opportunity to see fellow beekeepers eye to eye and not through two veils.

At the Christmas Social there will be food and drinks - though you will be buying your own drinks. There will also be a quiz with points for correct answers - and we all know what points mean!

Looking even further ahead there will be a Zoom talk on Wednesday 4th February 2026. The talk will be by David Evans from The Apiarist and the subject will be "Rational Varroa Control".

I hope to see you at these events.

Well that has been very interesting - and I suspect there is more to come.

I received a report of a suspected Yellow Legged Hornet (YLH) in Osmington from one of our members. He had already trapped it, photographed it and reported it to DEFRA using the App.

DEFRA were in attendance very quickly and confirmed that it was a YLH. They spent several days looking for more but saw just one. Hopes were high this was an isolated incident where a couple had blown in from a cruise ship. In fact DEFRA felt by the end of the week they had done all they could.

However a member of the public, who had seen YLH notices in the area, also reported a sighting and had lots of photos. At this point activity stepped up gear. Bait stations were set and we saw many YLH visiting the bait but "track and trace" was difficult. This was partly due to the wind and partly due to the food available on the ivy. The YLH would wander round the ivy feeding and then off it went to find more ivy.

As "track and trace" was not working DEFRA brought in radio devices. The YLH is big enough to fly with a transmitter on its back and this is what one was made to do. This can be an expensive process if you lose the transmitter but nothing like as expensive as not finding a nest.

Using this method a nest was found - some 25 metres up a tree.

A lance was sent for from Kent and this was brought in to poison the nest.

Once the nest was poisoned it was left for several days in case any more YLH returned to it.

After about ten days a specialist was brought in to climb the tree and retrieve the nest. The nest is retrieved so that a DNA analysis can be done to find if it is related to any other nest. In addition the nest contains poison which should not be left in the environment.

Looking at the photos you can see that this is a specialist job. It requires special skills - tree climbing with insecticide handling and all done wearing a thick suit. That suit is not a bee suit. I has to be at least 5mm thick since the YLH sting can be 3.5mm long.

Click on the video below to see the nest being detached.

The images shown above are not from the Channel Islands, not from Kent but from right here in Dorset. They show the Yellow Legged Hornet near a bait trap in the Osmington area.

I was fortunate enough to spend the afternoon with DEFRA inspecting traps and this is just some of what we saw. This is a worrying situation. These are either workers out looking for food or fertilised queens looking for somewhere to spend the winter.

If the nest is found and destroyed in the next few days we may be OK. If the nest is not found then we could have a serious problem. The gynes - future queens - in the nest will all go there separate ways to find somewhere to hibernate. Each of the hibernating queens could emerge in the spring and create a new nest then a new colony. A single nest could produce 350 gynes. Of those not all will be successfully fertilised and not all will survive the winter but one survival is too many.

As we did the inspection I was reminded that this is the same area that the Black Death arrived in the UK. Hopefully the Yellow Legged Hornet will not affect the bee population as Black Death affected humans.

It is up to us to keep on top of this problem. We must all be on the lookout for Yellow Legged Hornets from now until the weather gets cold and then again in the Spring as soon as it starts to warm up.

At the moment the situation is being handled by DEFRA and they do not require any further help. There is a risk that were more of us were to put out bait stations then the Yellow Legged Hornet would have so many choices it might not return to the one that DEFRA are using for "Track and Trace". They do not need any more eyes on the ground - we know it is there. If they do require any assistance then they will let me know and I will be in touch.