Monthly Meeting – Paul Verrier
Date/Time
Date(s) - Fri 25/09/2026
7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
Location
Godstowe School
Category(ies)
NB The meeting on Friday 25th September, the evening before the Bucks County Honey Show, is being held at the same Godstowe School, Shrubbery Road, High Wycombe, HP13 6PR, location as the show the following day. It means that you can attend the talk and drop off your show entries in one trip.
“Honeybee vision is not necessarily what you expect” is the title of the talk that our speaker Paul Verrier is giving. It addresses the question “What does a bee see and how does this marry with other environmental sensors of the bee?”
Paul says:
“The honeybee is master of many things. It has a tiny brain, and much of it is associated with recognising its surroundings. In this talk I will describe how the bee sees and what it’s vision is like and then how the bee appears to map so many of its sensor inputs to create a 3D view of its surroundings enabling it to go out and come back via a different route, where it stores this map and how well it recognises you, the beekeeper, it’s home, the hive and what shapes it recognises so you can use colour and shape to help it survive.
It is reported that at least half the honeybees that set off to forage for the first or second time don’t make it back home. Can we help them improve on this and get more honey?’
Paul Verrier, a beekeeper since 1982, is a retired bioinformatics research scientist who spent most of his working life at Rothamsted and while spending many years working with the Rothamsted Insect Survey, he was able to keep abreast of bee sciences and is now totally addicted to honeybees. Paul is Newsletter Editor for the North Bucks BKA.