Dear friends

Honey is one of nature’s amazing products – and beekeepers know best how much labour, time, good weather and flowers are needed for bees to produce a surplus. Bees create honey from the nectar and pollen of flowering plants - and then further elaborate it with some of their own substances – including enzymes and beneficial bacteria, into the complex and concentrated product that we know as honey. Honey’s physical and chemical properties have all sorts of properties that make it a very good medicine, maybe our oldest. Manuka honey’s medical attributes have been well studied, and it is proven that its antibacterial potency is due to one of its constituents, methylglyoxal. Methylglyoxal is not unique to Manuka honey - and your bees’ honey might contain it too. Honey has many other constituents and properties that make it beneficial, and the more we learn – the more amazing we realise it to be. After all the work by you and your bees, do not sell it too cheaply!

Earlier this year we carried out a survey of you, our esteemed readers, and realised that this paper edition of the Journal is highly valued, with most copies being read by more than one person. It is increasingly expensive for us to send to you, four times each year by air mail, however we will endeavour to do so as long as you are keen to receive the Journal. We are working hard to provide information to you in other useful formats too, and by the time you read this, work on our new website will be well underway – check our progress at www. beesfordevelopment.org. There is more for you to read on our new blog www.beesfordevelopment. wordpress.com, do not forget to ‘like us’ on Facebook and follow us on Twitter, and if we have your e-mail, you will receive our Technical Bee Notes too. Do join in these various discussions if you would like to – we are always interested to hear of your bees and their marvellous honey too.

Nicola Bradbear Director, Bees for development

At the recent Apimondia Congress in Daejeon, South Korea, Philip McCabe from Ireland was elected as the new President of Apimondia, the World Federation of Beekeeping Associations. Philip takes over from Gilles Ratia, who had served as President for six years. See more of the Congress on pages 10 and 11.