Letters

New Blackmore Vale, July 9, 2021 Letters Commercial beekeeping practices may

Your last three issues have featured items on honeybees and this is to be welcomed, but the biggest threat to them has gone largely unreported, but if continued may see the end of them as a viable species. Queens are increasingly failing without obvious explanation, but the likeliest is commercial breeding which tends to in-breed them. The system honeybees have evolved to perpetrate their species naturally is one where every queen is superseded by a daughter, or by several daughters, if by swarming. Many beekeepers purchase and breed from queens raised by professional breeders in isolated apiaries which are themselves conducive to in-breeding. They may take their “best” mother queen and make (say) 100 daughter queens from her. These daughters are then distributed worldwide to local breeders who may make a further (say) 100 granddaughters from each of those daughters for local distribution. This means that 10,000 grand daughters of minimum genetic variation are loose on the planet. These “best” queens are selected for such qualities as temper, brood pattern, honey gathering and reluctance to swarm, not for genetic diversity. There is a tendency for all creatures to breed ‘out’ rather than ‘in’, to achieve hybrid vigour or Heterosis. This deepens the gene pool, but is confounded by commercial bee breeding practise. Worker bees cannot select the best eggs to make new queens. (There is a royal line present in the hive which is bypassed). The best drones do not get to mate with the queens due to commercial use of artificial insemination. The best queens do not get the opportunity to select the best drones to mate with nor to fight and win over other queens for possession of the hive. This would all not be so bad if (as in beef cattle) the end of the “line” was Sunday lunch, but 40

Cartoon by Lyndon Wall

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these (almost) cloned queens are then allowed to breed in the wild themselves, reinforcing the inbreeding tendency. The genetic pool shrinks whenever selection for our needs takes precedents over the bees for theirs, which is to out breed. Fewer and fewer queen lines produce more and more of the queens on the planet, reducing the size of the gene pool. There are reasonable grounds to assume a reduction in genetic diversity will compromise the viability and survival of the honeybee We have an international industry tirelessly churning out queens from a decreasing genetic base that have been selected for qualities such as a quiet temperament, but are always in danger of in-breeding and indeed could be a sign of it. A British Standard Code of Practise (BSCP) needs to be drafted by government for the breeding of honeybee queens so that the commercial tendency to inbreed is curtailed Bill Summers (46 years a beekeeper), Sturminster Newton

n Many former pupils and staff who attended St Mary’s school were saddened to have it referred to as the ‘Marie Celeste’ (New Blackmore Vale, May 28) after considerable efforts have been made to remove items of personal and historical importance. This was always going to be a difficult and emotional task for all of us in the school community and we have all made a special effort to undertake this difficult part of saying ‘farewell’ to a beloved institution with tact and sensitivity. There is a generous offer from Vik Verma, education officer for Dorset Council, to take advantage of the hire of a marquee for an educational conference planned for special education professionals on the site in July, in order to hold a service of thanksgiving in the school chapel. This event is not a reunion and because Dorset are limiting the numbers of participants, it will be held by invitation only for those staff and former pupils in the top years most affected by the sudden closure of the school last summer. If all goes well, we very much hope to re-start school reunions in the proper sense again in the future provided these can be accommodated in the new SEND school that we are so pleased to know will continue the 75-year tradition of excellence in education which was the hallmark of St Mary’s. Mrs Corinne Gibbons Chairman. Shaftesbury Old Girls Association

n I should like to express my gratitude to whoever it was who found the purse which I had dropped in the car park in Gillingham on Thursday, June 8 and handed it in to the Waitrose store. Your kindness and honesty is much appreciated. Thank you! Una Moore, Motcombe

n I do hope the council is giving serious thought to where and how a tourist information centre could be re-established. It is an absolute disgrace that this facility has been allowed to disappear from such an interesting and historic town. The absence of a TIC is surely also hugely detrimental to Sherborne’s high street, which is already struggling after the lockdowns and many town and local events which it publicised and for which it also sold tickets. Last week I was stopped by a couple in a campervan with cycles attached, asking where they could find the TIC. They had been recommended to visit the town and had a few hours to spare. They also wished to cycle around the area. They were amazed to hear the TIC no longer existed and I felt ashamed to be telling them this. This is a decision that has not been thought through and it needs addressing urgently. Face to face service is irreplaceable. I am sure volunteers to help staff a TIC could easily be found among Sherborne’s very active and motivated residents. Mrs AV Oliver Stourton Caundle

n I feel compelled to reply to Mr Hoare MP ref the gravediggers’ strike comment he made. Here are the facts of the matter. I do wonder if Mr Hoare would have dug graves for £35 a week when the national average was over £80. Easy to condemn

New Blackmore Vale, July 9, 2021 Letters be to blame for loss of healthy swarms

from an ivory tower. A Liverpool gravedigger speaking at the time said: ‘When you dig a new grave, you are covered in mud and slime. I have lost count of the times when the earth around me has caved in while I’ve been digging. Just when you think you’ve finished, you find yourself up to your neck again in mud. Every day of your life, you run the risk of being trapped and smothered.’ For £35 a week, Liverpool’s gravediggers had worked in all weathers without protective clothing and were forbidden from entering the canteen. Instead, tea was brought to them on a dump truck and they ate around an open hole. Gravediggers have long been defined by their profession in the public’s eye, tasked with assisting the grief-stricken, but dismissed in the process. James Mayo, Blandford Forum

n Thanks to the splendid interest shown by the local media, our Dorset Online Archive Film Festival has been a great success. It was a simple idea: just a selection of films from our collection dating from the 1910s to the 1990s made available via the internet for a week, with the support of Dorset Council. Yet, as simple concepts sometimes do, it really seems to have delighted a great many people. Quite a few have been in touch with us to say how, after all the restrictions of covid, this opportunity to look at local life in the past through the window of moving image has really meant something to them. Many have seen echoes of their own lives and even relatives who are no longer with us. Covid has prevented us from presenting archive film shows to live audiences. There have been 259 such shows so far, reaching tens of thousands of people. The Online Film Festival has helped to fill that gap. The festival is now over but I am glad to say that it is still possible to see films and hear sound recordings from the Windrose archive. Our website windroseruralmedia.org provides a lot of information about our work which, as well as the archive, uses the media in all sorts of community-based projects. If you visit the Windrose Shop on the website you will find a wide range of DVDs and CDs available featuring material from the archive. Windrose is, of course, a registered charity and all proceeds from the sale of DVDs and CDs is used to help fund the archive and our other work. The website also includes Close Encounters, a map through which you can find locally relevant excerpts from some of our films and recordings. We did not know that an online film festival would work. It is only because you and other local media were able to provide the vital link to communities around the county that it has. Thank you. Trevor Bailey, director, Windrose Rural Media Trust, Bourton, Gillingham

n First let me make it clear the front-line staff are doing a wonderful job under trying circumstances. But GPs’ surgeries seem to be using covid as an excuse all the time. Oh I dropped my pencil... must be covid. The Blandford Clinic has two internet sites they tell you to use. theblandfordgrouppractice.co.uk and systmonline.tpp-uk.com. My recent problem, and there have been many before, is that there is now no information available on future appointments. If you go to the first site to look for a future appointment it sends you to the second site where everything about appointments is now inaccessible. What really is the point in having the sites if they don’t do anything and everyone puts everything with a problem down to covid. When I did track my appointment, using an app that cannot be used on a desktop, it said appointment White Cliffe surgery and did not mention anything about it being a phone appointment. I have a breathing problem at the moment and don’t need to be rushing here, there and everywhere. It would be interesting to see if other people see the covid being used for everything. Name and address supplied

n Thank you for highlighting the tree felling at Sherborne House. At a time when one of the government’s major policies for the environment is to increase equality of access to nature it is disappointing that the council would approve the felling of these magnificent (irreplaceable within a generation) trees which were such a visible asset to the town’s green infrastructure. On another note, I was shocked at the timing of the felling. It is an offence to disturb nesting birds and bat roosts, the peak sensitivity of these species to disturbance is during the breeding season which this felling coincided with. Given many trees were ivy covered full assessment of the potential for these trees to host bats and birds would have been compromised, increasing the risk of an offence taking place by not delaying felling until the autumn when the breeding has been completed. We are also facing a pollinator crises in this country and ivy is a fantastic late season source of nectar. I feel strongly that the council acted recklessly in allowing felling to take place during the bird and bird breeding season, and that by permitting the feeling at all they are showing a disregard for the environment and for the health and well-being benefits enjoyed by local communities from easy access to nature. I have also been disappointed by DCCs approach to road verge management – scraping soil and grit from the edge of the road and dumping it on the soft verge instead of disposing of the material responsibly (which later in the year has attracted flytipping), and in the summer mowing verges to a very short height and leaving thick arisings to lie on the verge smothering the vegetation – again timed at the most sensitive period for wildlife (when birds are busy foraging for insects to support their chicks.). I’m concerned that by setting the mowing to such a low height there is a risk of killing or injuring protected species like slow worms which take refuge in long grass – again reckless and places DCC at risk of committing an offence under the W&C Act. Natural Capital is one of this county’s greatest assets and it is concerning DCC do not seem to posses the ability or motivation to protect and enhance it. Verges and hedgerows are particularly important for wildlife in a landscape where space for nature is becoming squeezed into smaller and smaller places. Gemma Worswick

Crowds mark the Coronation in Blandford in 1936. Image courtesy of Windrose Rural Media, whose director has written in, below