Steve Riley
Steve Riley is the chair and education officer for Westerham Beekeepers. He is the author of “The Honey Bee Solution to Varroa” and a member of the “Path to Varroa Resistance in the UK” team led by Prof. Stephen Martin.
Richard Ridler
Richard has been the Chair of the Charity Bees Abroad since 2015. He is a Master Beekeeper and past Chair of the Essex Beekeepers’ Association.
Jane Ridler
Jane’s first degree is in Zoology, and she is also a Master Beekeeper. She has recently retired as Chair at Essex BKA and returned to the role of County Education Officer.
Jane’s presentation will focus on Drone Laying Queens and Laying Workers. We’ll look at the fascinating complexity which is the social honeybee colony, and leads to the problems of DLQs and LWs, as well as looking at identification and such practical solutions that there are.
Are you contemplating taking the Basic Assessment next season? Being assessors at BBKA shows us that the DLQ/LW topic to be just about the least well-known aspect of the BA syllabus!
Jack Silberrad
Seven years ago, Jack hung up his suit and put on his boots to become a bee farmer. Qualified under the Worshipful Guild of Wax Chandlers, bees are in his blood. It’s what his grandfather did in the Seychelles, Zambia, and Long Mynd of Shropshire.
With experience managing hundreds of colonies in environments as diverse as Heather Moors, London rooftops and the Mānuka hills of South Island New Zealand, Jack now runs his own colonies in East Anglia, where he is a resident bee inspector. A microbiologist academically he works tirelessly for healthy bees where in 2022 he diagnosed ~10% of all European Foulbrood in England & Wales.
Jack is passionate for community outreach, now working for bee health projects spanning England, Ghana, and Northern Ireland, whilst heading a team of bee health experts operating in the West of England..
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