Tag: #Bees

Broadwindsor Parish Group Council Meeting – Monday, 13th September 2021

A face-to-face meeting of the Parish Council will be held at 7.30 pm on Monday 13 September 2021 at Blackdown Village Hall.  SOCIAL DISTANCING MEASURES WILL BE IN PLACE. All are welcome to attend.

The full agenda is available to download HERE. Minutes of previous Group Parish Council meetings can be found online HERE.

Lots for the councillors to address this month, including six Planning Applications.

They begin by disclosures of personal and prejudicial interests from Councillors and employees on matters to be considered at the Meeting together with any dispensations and any updates to the Register of Interests.

After any matters arising, parish residents are invited to give their views and ask questions of the Parish Council on issues on this Agenda.

Reports include the Election – Broadwindsor Group Parish Council Vacancy, Burstock Ward.

A variety of issues received on Correspondance & Notices:

a. Broadwindsor Group Parish Community Land Trust, Request for Grant of £600.00 towards administrative costs.
b. Broadwindsor Resident, Maintenance of Back Lane.
c. Broadwindsor Resident, Comrades Hall Entrance/Exit Safety Concerns.
d. DAPTC, Notice of Annual General Meeting 13 November 2021.
e. Beaminster Museum, Gardens and Allotments Exhibition.

Item 8. Accounts include To approve payment of £5410.00 for Small Engine Services (Ariens Apex 52 Model 991315 Mower).

Item 9. Planning Applications Received for consideration this month are:
(Please click on the Planning Application Number for further details.)

Item 11 on the agenda will be an update on the Community Pub proposal.
Item 17 considers the request for a beehive on the Allotments.
Item 18 – the highways addresses the following:

a. Report from the Footpaths Officer, Cllr. Dorothy Rowe.
b. Verge Management in the Grouped Parish Area.
c. Back Lane, Broadwindsor.
d. Common Water Lane Update.
e. Fly Tipping on Hursey Common.
f. Fingerpost Maintenance Tender Update.
g. Adopted Telephone Kiosks Update.
h. Old Shop, Broadwindsor.
i. Road Surface in Littlewindsor.

Item 21 an invitation for Residents to give their views and ask questions of the Parish Council on any outstanding
issues on this Agenda or raise issues for future consideration.

After agreeing the date and venue of the next meeting, the meeting will then close.

The press and public are invited to attend.  Under the Openess of Local Government Bodies Regulations 2014, members of the public may now film, photograph and make audio recordings of the proceedings of the formal Council meeting, though not, under current legislation, of the Public Participation session, as this is not part of the formal agenda of the meeting. Recording activity should be respectful to the conduct of the meeting and behavious that disrupts the meeting (such as oral commentary) will not be permitted.  Any member of the public shall not speak for more than five minutes.  A question asked by a member of the public during Public Participation shall not require a response or debate during the meeting though the Chairman may direct that a written response will be provided subsequent to the meeting.

There are currently 14 Elected Councillors (Burstock Ward vacant) – Click HERE to identify them.


The contents of this post are compiled by Wendy Shields, with information taken from the Broadwindsor Group Parish Council’s website.
Download the full agenda HERE.

#Broadwindsor,#Burstock,#Blackdown,#Hursey,#Kittwhistle,#Seaborough,#Drimpton,#Dorset,#BWGPC,#BGPCLT,#FMRTrust,#SchemeOfDelegation,#SocialDistancing,#Community,#DorsetPolice,#Farmers,#PlanningApplication,#ParishCouncil,#BusBackBetter,#Coronavirus,#PalmersBrewery,#CommunityPub,#Bees,#ClimateChange,#AffordableHousing,#ComradesHall,#VillageHall,#Highways,#BeSafe,#StaySafe

Broadwindsor Parish Group Council – Informal Online Meeting – Monday, 12 July 2021

The Broadwindsor Parish Group Council have published their agenda for their meeting on Monday evening. As the meeting is informal, any opinions expressed by the Council will seek approval through the Scheme of Delegation* after the meeting.

The full agenda is available to download HERE.  Minutes of previous Group Parish Council meetings can be found online HERE.

The meeting will be held using the Zoom platform and all are welcome to attend.

The meeting can be accessed HERE.
The Meeting ID: 897 5277 5290
Zoom is Free! – Sign Up and get it HERE.

*Local authority decisions are made by elected members but for the Council to be able to function on a day to day basis the law enables the various executive and non-executive functions to be delegated to Officers. It is called the Scheme of Delegation.

First to be addressed in their correspondances is a Notice of Application for a Definitive Map Modification Order, Dorset Council. The effect of the application, if successful, will be to alter Dorset Council’s record of public rights of way by adding a Byway Open to All Traffic along Common Water Lane from the end of the public road in Broadwindsor near Providence Farm to the public road, east of the tunnel in the Beaminster Parish.

The investigation into this application has not yet begun but in the meantime parishioners if they so wish, can submit any relevant evidence which will be included in the Council’s report. Evidence can be submitted to the Clerk or sent directly to Dorset Council.

Included this month are 2 Planning Applications have been Received and Circulated for Consultation:

  • P/HOU/2021/01969, 6 Netherhay Lane, Drimpton, DT8 3RL
  • P/HOU/2021/01463, Wood Farm Wood Lane, Kittwhistle, DT8 3LG

Broadwindsor’s Community Pub Proposal is item 10 on their agenda.

Item 12 addresses the BUS BACK BETTER scheme: A long-term strategy for buses in England.

The HIGHWAYS address the following:

a. Report from the Footpaths Officer
b. Verge Management in the Grouped Parish Area
c. Common Water Lane Update
d. Dog Fouling
e. B3164 RiskAssessment

Bumble Bee on flowerBees on the allotments?
A tenant’s request to put a beehive on his plot will be addressed at item 15.

After public participation and the date of the next council meeting is decided, the FMR Trust will convene:

a. To receive the Finance Report (Balance £4,357.27as of 5 July 2021)
b. To approve payment of £235.00 for Broadwindsor Group Parish Council (Trust Administration)
c. To consider grant of £750.00for Drimpton Hall & Recreational Ground (LED Floodlights)
d. To consider grant of £369.41for 1st Broadwindsor Rainbows/Guides & West Dorset Rangers (Outdoor Shelter)
e. To note payment of £711.75 for Broadwindsor Group Parish Council (MUGA Loan Repayment)

The meeting will then close.

The press and public are invited to attend.  Under the Openess of Local Government Bodies Regulations 2014, members of the public may now film, photograph and make audio recordings of the proceedings of the formal Council meeting, though not, under current legislation, of the Public Participation session, as this is not part of the formal agenda of the meeting. Recording activity should be respectful to the conduct of the meeting and behavious that disrupts the meeting (such as oral commentary) will not be permitted.  Any member of the public shall not speak for more than five minutes.  A question asked by a member of the public during Public Participation shall not require a response or debate during the meeting though the Chairman may direct that a written response will be provided subsequent to the meeting.

There are currently 14 Elected Councillors (Burstock Ward vacant) – Click HERE to identify them.


The contents of this post are compiled by Wendy Shields, with information taken from the Broadwindsor Group Parish Council’s website.
Download the full agenda HERE.

#Broadwindsor,#Burstock,#Blackdown,#Hursey,#Kittwhistle,#Seaborough,#Drimpton,#Dorset,#BWGPC,#BGPCLT,#FMRTrust,#SchemeOfDelegation,#SocialDistancing,#Community,#DorsetPolice,#Farmers,#PlanningApplication,#ParishCouncil,#BusBackBetter,#Coronavirus,#PalmersBrewery,#CommunityPub,#Bees,#ClimateChange,#Zoom,#AffordableHousing,#ComradesHall,#VillageHall,#Highways,#NationalLockdown,#BeSafe,#StaySafe

Bees – The June Gap

There are around 280 species of bee which are found in the UK.  June is the beginning of the summer season when the spring flowering plants and trees shed their blooms having been pollinated and now begin to form seeds but the main flow of summer flowering blooms has yet to begin. For bee keepers, this time is known as the ‘June Gap‘.

The June Gap is often felt the most in rural areas dominated by intensive agriculture. The plentiful hawthorn blooms of hedgerows, hedgerow trees and the glut of autumn sown Rapeseed are largely over throughout most of the UK by June but the summer wild flowers are not yet at their peak and the Heather bloom is still many weeks away.

It isn’t just our bees – this affects any invertebrate which depends on nectar and pollen as a food source: butterflies*, moths, hoverflies, beetles, thrips and wasps.  If you are a caring wildlife gardener, then it is worth ensuring there is not a gap in your garden at this time 🙂

*June is also a good month for garden butterflies including the large and small green veined whites, early migrant painted ladies, red admirals, small tortoiseshells, brimstonees, speckled wood and meadow browns.

The weather has an effect on when the colonies of bees swarm and May has been very wet.  There is a 17th century proverb:

A swarm in May is worth a load of hay;
a swarm in June is worth a silver spoon;
but a swarm in July is not worth a fly.

The Natural History museum have produced a pocket ID chart with the six most common UK bumblebee species for you to identify by looking at the insects’ colour patterns. Download the Bumblebee Quick ID chart HERE.

#Broadwindsor,#Drimpton,#Burstock,#Blackdown,#Hursey,#Kittwhistle,#Seaborough,#Dorset,#Village,#Bees,#Butterflies,#NHM,#RuralLife,#BumbleBeeID,#Buzz,#Pollen,#Nectar,#BeeSafe,#BeSafe,#StaySafe

Not All Is As It Seems . . .

At the beginning of the month, Broadwindsor published a Happy Easter post with this beautiful image crediting Ernesto Murguia with how in June 2020, an artist published on Twitter saying her parents are beekeepers and they sent her this image from a fellow French bee keeper.  Such a beautiful image understandably went ‘viral’ on the internet – but not for the first time.  It has now come to light that the image is not a hive created entirely by bees. The story of this image, of bees, an artist, the National Trust, a folklorist, in South Africa and more…  Many thanks to Steve Byrne for his research and the thread on Twitter.

A post from the UK’s National Trust back in 2015 claimed to be the original source of the photograph.

After the image had been shared thousands and thousands of times, someone on Twitter challenged the National Trust, but they confirmed it was real:

National Trust Challenged

Then, as it begins to circulate again, a bee keeper named Brian Fanner replies to the National Trust:

Brian Fanner - "I made this"

Brian then proves this by sending his post from 2013:

Bee Heart - Brian Fanner

The inquisitive Steve Byrne then addresses both the National Trust and Brian Fanner on Twitter – the National Trust did not respond but Brian Fanner did!  He sent Steve this image –


with the following words:
“The things that come up are really funny from how bees have “artistic sensibilities” to bees creating that shape “to increase airflow”. I’ve seen companies using it in their websites and so many claiming it came out of their hive somewhere in the world. 
I used this board, routed in the slots… a rush job I’ll admit… waxed in some foundation strips into the slots and screwed inside a deep langstroth hive lid and stuck it on the hive. The bees made do best they could…”
Brian continued, “The lines are slots into which a foundation wax with the comb pattern on it can be placed…secured with melted beeswax. Normally…a sheet…to guide the bees as to where to build. So they just come across this weird pattern of foundation strip and start building onto it.  After that they just fill it out best they can. It’s a simple manipulation.
The bees are Capensis. The honey was most likely early season succulent type plant called a ‘vygie‘. [mesembryanthemums]. Even @Pinterest use this as the cover image for ‘bee art’“.
“I called the image ‘a sweet heart‘ dedicated to my wife…per the very first post of it on my Facebook page in 2013. We scraped all the comb off the board, strained out the wax and consumed…not a very practical artwork to keep.”

So it is possible that the National Trust‘s social media person got it wrong in 2015 – the image would appear to have been around since 2013.

Steve commented: “It seems to have travelled to many countries & the story has been told and retold. As a folklorist, the giveaway was in the “beekeeper forgot the frame” wording. It kept coming up again & again. That is classic folklore, where a memorable snippet repeats and is passed on. And that, folks, is what we call Internet Folklore, where stories spread and change quicker than ever, and involve communities of people experiencing a simple yet heartwarming tale.”

He concluded: “The thing to take away? On the internet, search behind what you see. Don’t take things at face value. Don’t let your “aww” gene get in the way of thinking, hmm, is this for real? Because there are people out there who seek to use such kindly human instincts in unkind ways.“

It’s still a delightful story. The artwork was made for his wife and they ate it together 🙂

You can download Steve’s full thread in a readable format HERE.

AristotleIn 2011, Brian Fanner was profiled on social media as keeping bees and was “a smallholder in the Hopefield district of the Renosterveld” in the Western Cape province of South Africa.  He was also mentioned in publications as a bee keeper.

In 2014, Brian, with his brother Mark started making their own electric Ukulele’s, based on the southern tip of Africa, and out in the countryside to boot, they became expert in-sources. They pretty much make everything themselves. They also have an office in Cape Town. To learn more about them and their rocking Ukuleles – Click HERE.

#Broadwindsor,#Burstock,#Blackdown,#Hursey,#Kittwhistle,#Seaborough,#Drimpton,,#Community,#Bees,#Honey,#NationalTrust,#ByMeSong,#SteveByrne,#BrianFanner,#FannerElectricUkulele,#MyModernMet,#ErnestoMurguía,#BeeKind,#BeKind,#Art,#Viral,#WhatIsReal,#SocialDistancing,#BeSafe,#StaySafe

 

 

Happy Easter From The Heart

This beautiful photograph was taken by the owner of the hive.  The beekeeper forgot to put the frames in which the bees collect honey, and the bees built their own architecture from the honeycomb, which takes into account natural ventilation, so that the air can flow freely and maintain a stable temperature. This is the heart.

The photograph was posted on social media by Ernesto Murguía

Happy Easter!

#Broadwindsor,#Burstock,#Blackdown,#Hursey,#Kittwhistle,#Seaborough,#Drimpton,#Easter,#Community,#Bees,#Honey,#NaturalLove,#ErnestoMurguía,#BeeKind,#BeKind,#SocialDistancing,#BeSafe,#StaySafe