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rear their larvae or store honey and pollen,
and also a small tub of propolis, a sticky
resin-like substance which bees collect from
the buds of plants and use rather as we do
plaster in our own homes, filling unwanted
holes and gaps with it and repairing damaged
comb. It is also collected commercially and
sold in shops for about £140 per kg! It has
some medicinal uses, being found to be an
effective bactericide and more recently has
been found be an effective agent in inhibiting
the reproduction of certain viruses. A large
block of pure beeswax was also shown to the
group, giving off that lovely aroma unique to
beeswax. Other interesting facts to emerge
were that a worker bee will only spend, at
most, about 16 minutes away from the hive but
will travel up to two miles to a nectar source;
a queen bee can lay up to 2,000 eggs per day
and that a colony can number 50-60,000
individuals in a single hive. High spot of
the day was afternoon tea with honeycake
provided by Geoff's wife, very much appreciated
by the visitors. The afternoon also witnessed
a number of swarms of bees in the garden
hanging from a willow tree. At the beginning
of the afternoon seven individual groups had
been noted and by the time we left these had
coalesced into three.
Another bee of note, this time a wild one, is
the wool—carder bee, Anthidium manicatum.
Two or three specimens have frequented the
flowering sage in my garden in Forest Gate.
It is one of the loveliest bees I have seen,
slightly larger than a honey-bee and with a
very broad abdomen. It has smoky—grey wings