National Trust Beehives problem, Twickenham

[MuswellMetro]

i have picked up from two sources that the National trust gave a beekeeper 24 hours notice a few weeks ago to remove all the Bees from Ham House, Twickenham, Middx

The Bees have been there a year but on going Queenless went OTT and stung 50 members of the public and one was seriously hospitalised

one of the reports implied that the apiary was inappropriately located, has anyone seen it , what was the apiary like or know any more infomation as to what went wrong

 

[Tom Bick]

This is close to me I was only at my at my association meeting today for a short time to hear if it is the case, or if any one mentioned it. I find it hard that Twickenham Beekeepers would not be fully involved in this and if the report is right it is very surprising.

 

[MuswellMetro]

This is close to me I was only at my at my association meeting today for a short time to hear if it is the case, or if any one mentioned it. I find it hard that Twickenham Beekeepers would not be fully involved in this and if the report is right it is very surprising.

tom thats exactly what i thought, as Twikkers is one of the better BKAs, i was talking to an employee of Richmond park when it came up first

 

[Tom Bick]

“Twikkers is one of the better bkas” I was a member for two years its hard to imaging a better one. Time will tell on this one Geoff.

 

[Ape Resi]

i work for NT and i just posted a message on our internal forum to see if this correct and the BKA was involved.

 

[milkermel]

Trust do tend to have a knee jerk reaction to things, I worked for them for a few years and rather than being proactive the just deal with things when they go wrong! I looked at putting hives on site, but to be honest £20 per hive per year seemed a little steep to me! Glad i didnt now as took redundancy package last year!

 

[greatbritishhoney]

Could be something to do with the "Bee Part of It" project. From what I understand a lot of the beekeepers keeping bees at NT properties as part of the project are NT employees who are new to beekeeping (although I may be completely wrong about that!).

I keep bees at an NT property near me and have always found NT to be very accomodating and helpful - have never had any problems. I don't pay them anything either!

 

[grizzly]

As GBH says it was probably to do with the "Bee Part of it" project they ran last year.

I was quite shocked at some of the location suggestions proposed when i started to look after the Hampshire hive, i eventually found a relatively quiet location, but i had to force them to fence it off.

I warned them back at the end of feb that if they did not buy more equipment so i could give the bees more space,they would without question "Swarm", and last week they had to close off the rose garden to the public as funnily enough, the bees Swarmed.

Two months ago i gave them the invoice for new gear, 6 emails and 3 phone messages were ignored, so when they called me last week in a panic that they had to close off one of their main tourist attractions. i decided it was not worth leaving work early for.

 

[Poly Hive]

Another classic case of not knowing what the f*** they were getting involved in.

PH