OBKA Winter Talk – Dietary Preferences of Honey Bees – 14th October 2022

The first of this year’s Winter Talks was by Dr. Raquel Teixeira de Sousa, of Oxford University’s Bee Laboratory. The topics was ‘Dietary preferences and intake of mineral salt of adult honey bees.’ and it was fascinating.

Dr. de Sousa was investigating what minerals and metals bees are in a bees diet (via pollen) and if they have any preferences for specific minerals or metals. And they do!

It was fascinating to see how the researchers find out if a bee has a preference for a particular mineral, and to see the results of their investigations.

We had a really good attendance of around 30 members. A small sample of the over 200 books in the OBKA Library had been brought along by Richard Stansfield and Tea, coffee and biscuits provided thanks to Fiona Gibson and colleagues on the Committee.

Details of the next talk are in the Events Calendar.