A wise man once told me: “If you think you are important place your hands in a bucket of still water and move them around as much as you like to really agitate the contents of the bucket. Go back twenty minutes later and see what difference you have made”.  

A major health scare and a broken leg curtailed my active participation in Trust matters for the last three months of 2025. However, my fellow Trustees under the leadership of Vice Chairman, Dirk de Graaf, kept the Trust operating at full capacity and continued to develop the good work done through the rest of the year. I am personally grateful to all of them for their effort and commitment through-out the year. 

I am now almost fully recovered and look forward to taking an active part in the work of the Trust in the coming year. As you may have read in our news column, we will be taking just two calls for grants this year. One for major grants, up to £30,000, and one for smaller grants, up to £5,000. We feel this is the best way to mange the resources we have at our disposal.

There are several projects that we funded over the past 12 to 18 months that are due to publish their results in 2026. We look forward to reporting their findings and promoting their work via the portfolio pages of our website and social media platforms. We will also continue to update the website as work progresses with digitising the Historical Collection and the Bee Boles Register.

We live in a troubled world but hope that in our own small way we can at least help improve life for bees and for beekeeping wherever it takes place on our planet. 

I wish you all the best for successful and innovative research, pleasurable and profitable beekeeping, or just enjoyment of bees in 2026. 

Richard Jones 
Chairman.