The Isle of Man Beekeeping Federation has a new hive.

Last week the federation was handed the keys to a new beekeeping education centre at Marown old school.

This gives it a permanent base for training on beekeeping and workshops on the making and maintenance of hives.

The £4,500 funding for the new base is thanks to a donation from the Manx Lottery Trust.

In seeking premises this site is nice and central and away from passers by, reducing concerns about any accidental stinging.

The centre is a very welcome development for the organisation which is thriving, 45 people joined the course last year alone.

’We can work out of the weather now,’ said the federation’s Cilla Platt. ’On the hardware side, when we used to have to work in community halls we’d have to be very careful not to get wax on the floor, we are not grubby but it’s nice to know we don’t have to be ultra careful about that.’

In addition the federation can continue to spread education about the importance of keeping island bees healthy.

There is already the threat of the deadly varroa virus, which is decimating bee colonies world wide. The island managed to be declared varroa free by the European Union in 2015 and ban the importation of bees. A new devastating threat looms in the form of the Asian hornet.

Native to Asia, it was accidentally introduced to south-western France, on a shipment of pottery from China in 2005.

It is now widespread in parts of France, Spain, the Channel Islands and Portugal and there have been several sightings in the UK.

This extremely aggressive insect hovers outside bee hives, decapitating honey bees as they fly home and feeds their bodies to their own hornet larvae.

Exhausted from defending the hives, bees are permanently distracted from pollinating activities.

Warning

The Department of Environment, Food and Agriculture issued a warning about the hornet last year, but Cilla said: ’It is never robust enough.

’Education is so important. All we can do is keep an eye out.

’They are so easily imported. And there is a human threat. Wiping out a huge population of bees takes just one hornet.

’Bees are the foundation stone of flowering, a third of our food relies on bee pollunating.’