Earlier this year, when I resigned from my local Beekeeping Association, The London Beekeepers’ Association (LBKA). My conscience dictated that I expose the self-serving practices and irregularities of a small number of LBKA officials. The LBKA has become unrecognisable from the benevolent bee-club which I had joined five years previously, having become more interested in selling over-priced seed-packets (indulgences for the guilt-racked burghers of London) and in self-promotion than in the craft of beekeeping. This Spring, I made the decision to resign and blow the whistle on their shabby antics.
So please read below the open letter which I “Nailed To The Beehive” on 20th March 2013.
"This open letter is to notify you that, with immediate effect, I am resigning my Membership of the London Beekeepers’ Association (LBKA).
After five years of LBKA Membership, I have been dismayed by the unwelcome blurring of the lines between the personal and business interests of a small number of elected LBKA Officers and their roles as representatives of the LBKA.
By way of illustration, I submitted a motion under “Any Other Business” at the 2012 LBKA AGM which, in the interests of transparency, required that all LBKA Committee Members should disclose their commercial bee-keeping activities within the London area. This proposal was passed unanimously at the AGM by a show of hands. Yet almost 6 months later, no disclosure of the LBKA Committee’s commercial bee-keeping activities has been forthcoming to the LBKA Membership.
Like all beekeepers, LBKA Officers are entitled to increase their hives under management, however that does not sit well with the strident “too many bees in London” message repeated in the media and associated with the LBKA over the last 18 months. Specifically, I am dismayed that the current LBKA Chair’s emoluments for managing additional hives for commercial entities remain undisclosed, all the more so in light of the serious conflict-of-interest questions raised by an intemperate attack (in a 12th October 2012 report by BBC) by the LBKA on a commercial beekeeper in London performing similar hive-management services to the Chair’s own activities. Click on: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-19913180
Furthermore, a group of LBKA Officers recently conspired to censor my personal opinions on beekeeping matters expressed on the “Beekeeping Forum” website. This sinister attempt to stifle free speech failed (presumably the independent website moderators saw no reason to supress any of my 185 postings as “djg” on a wide variety of topics on their Forum). Please feel free to judge for yourself by clicking on this thread which I started on the Forum on 23 April 2012 and which has incurred the LBKA’s displeasure: “Bee-Friendly Planting In London”. It is disappointing that, rather than acknowledge my early 2012 contribution to steering the LBKA’s focus towards bee-friendly forage as the key solution (and away from their negative “too many bees in London” mantra), the LBKA decided to persecute my postings! Considering the LBKA’s own voracious appetite for media expression, this cynical attempt to gag one of their Members on a public Forum was deeply hypocritical.
As the final straw, the LBKA Committee has acknowledged that in January 2013 the LBKA Secretary used my confidential personal and place of work contact details, supplied to the LBKA for official use only, to communicate with me (to use the LBKA Secretary’s own words) “without my LBKA hat on” and using her personal business e-mail stationery. This unwelcome and unsolicited personal e-mail communication to both my home and work addresses by the LBKA Secretary constituted (to use the LBKA Committee’s own words) “the cross over from offical to unoffical use” of my confidential contact data. Despite my formal complaint at this admitted breach of data protection protocols, including the LBKA’s own Constitution, the LBKA Committee and its Secretary have lacked the integrity to offer me the apology which I have requested.
I no longer wish to be associated with the disreputable behaviour of a small group of LBKA Officers, so it is with a heavy heart that I depart from the LBKA, having acted as a whistle-blower against the LBKA’s wayward corporate governance. Yet I am happy to report that I have joined a BKA which prioritises the communication of shared beekeeping skills amongst its Members, over the compulsive PR cravings and oppressive exercise of petty officialdom which have become the hallmarks of this gang of elected LBKA Officers."
So please read below the open letter which I “Nailed To The Beehive” on 20th March 2013.
"This open letter is to notify you that, with immediate effect, I am resigning my Membership of the London Beekeepers’ Association (LBKA).
After five years of LBKA Membership, I have been dismayed by the unwelcome blurring of the lines between the personal and business interests of a small number of elected LBKA Officers and their roles as representatives of the LBKA.
By way of illustration, I submitted a motion under “Any Other Business” at the 2012 LBKA AGM which, in the interests of transparency, required that all LBKA Committee Members should disclose their commercial bee-keeping activities within the London area. This proposal was passed unanimously at the AGM by a show of hands. Yet almost 6 months later, no disclosure of the LBKA Committee’s commercial bee-keeping activities has been forthcoming to the LBKA Membership.
Like all beekeepers, LBKA Officers are entitled to increase their hives under management, however that does not sit well with the strident “too many bees in London” message repeated in the media and associated with the LBKA over the last 18 months. Specifically, I am dismayed that the current LBKA Chair’s emoluments for managing additional hives for commercial entities remain undisclosed, all the more so in light of the serious conflict-of-interest questions raised by an intemperate attack (in a 12th October 2012 report by BBC) by the LBKA on a commercial beekeeper in London performing similar hive-management services to the Chair’s own activities. Click on: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-19913180
Furthermore, a group of LBKA Officers recently conspired to censor my personal opinions on beekeeping matters expressed on the “Beekeeping Forum” website. This sinister attempt to stifle free speech failed (presumably the independent website moderators saw no reason to supress any of my 185 postings as “djg” on a wide variety of topics on their Forum). Please feel free to judge for yourself by clicking on this thread which I started on the Forum on 23 April 2012 and which has incurred the LBKA’s displeasure: “Bee-Friendly Planting In London”. It is disappointing that, rather than acknowledge my early 2012 contribution to steering the LBKA’s focus towards bee-friendly forage as the key solution (and away from their negative “too many bees in London” mantra), the LBKA decided to persecute my postings! Considering the LBKA’s own voracious appetite for media expression, this cynical attempt to gag one of their Members on a public Forum was deeply hypocritical.
As the final straw, the LBKA Committee has acknowledged that in January 2013 the LBKA Secretary used my confidential personal and place of work contact details, supplied to the LBKA for official use only, to communicate with me (to use the LBKA Secretary’s own words) “without my LBKA hat on” and using her personal business e-mail stationery. This unwelcome and unsolicited personal e-mail communication to both my home and work addresses by the LBKA Secretary constituted (to use the LBKA Committee’s own words) “the cross over from offical to unoffical use” of my confidential contact data. Despite my formal complaint at this admitted breach of data protection protocols, including the LBKA’s own Constitution, the LBKA Committee and its Secretary have lacked the integrity to offer me the apology which I have requested.
I no longer wish to be associated with the disreputable behaviour of a small group of LBKA Officers, so it is with a heavy heart that I depart from the LBKA, having acted as a whistle-blower against the LBKA’s wayward corporate governance. Yet I am happy to report that I have joined a BKA which prioritises the communication of shared beekeeping skills amongst its Members, over the compulsive PR cravings and oppressive exercise of petty officialdom which have become the hallmarks of this gang of elected LBKA Officers."
