Many of you have asked for videos of the lectures you would have seen at the Spring Convention. BBKA is grateful to both the C.B.Dennis Trust and the Worshipful Company of Wax Chandlers for generous sponsorship of all three recordings below.  These have been provided by Professor Tom Seeley, of Cornell University, who was to have been a speaker at the Convention. We hope you enjoy them!   

Lecture 1: Bee Hunting. This presentation will show you a fun way to locate wild colonies of honey bees, using the tools and techniques of a bee hunter. It is a kind of treasure hunt, though these days the treasure is the discovery, not the honey in the bee tree. Sometimes, though, it will lead you to a beekeeper's hive, but that is fun, too!

Lecture 2: The Lives of Bees. This presentation will give you an overview of what is known about how honey bee colonies live in the wild, that is, when they are not living in a beekeeper's hive and are not subject to a beekeeper's manipulation. In short, it provides a look at the true natural history of Apis mellifera, at least for the colonies that live in the countryside around the small city of Ithaca, New York (USA).

Lecture 3: Darwinian Beekeeping. This presentation provides an introduction to a way of being a beekeeper who wants to let his or her colonies live as naturally as possible. This is an approach to beekeeping that is only relevant for a small-scale beekeeper, one who has just a few hives, and for a beekeeper who does not seek to get a lot of honey from his or her bees. It is appropriate for somebody who wants to relate to the bees more as a beewatcher than as a beekeeper.

A list of his published books is available here 

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