Founded in 1964 by the hard work of Beowulf Cooper and a few others. For the conservation, restoration, study, selection and improvement of our native and near native bees of Britain and Ireland. It became British Isles Bee Breeders Association and as the emphasis shifted towards bee improvement it's name was changed to the current one.

I have always supported the aims of this group. I only wish that I was a youth again, as a lifetime of work still needs to be done!

Originally the group was called:- 'Village Bee Breeders Association' (VBBA)...
much of the early work to bring this group together was done by the late Beowulf Cooper.

BIBBA stage a conference on a regular basis, this haslectures that are up to date and pertinent to bee breeding, the vast majority of attendees being bee breeders or those who are interested in improving their bees. I can personally recommend this as a very good opportunities for chat are almost as good as those at the Gormanston Summer School, which is attended by many BIBBA members, many of whom are directly involved in the lecturing and workshop streams.

The BIBBA Documents link leads to such things as forms that can be printed to enable application for conference attendance and many other useful items that really ought to have been provided on the BIBBA website, but at the time of writing this note (April 2006) there had been no progress on BIBBA's website since the prototype that was posted in 2005.

There are some long standing and stalwart members of this group, whose dedication and sense of purpose, puts many professional organisations to shame.

There is another aspect to BIBBA... They are interested in educating beekeepers in the techniques of bee breeding and all of the elements that go to make up the whole package. They have found over a number of years that the best way of getting this information across is in the form of workshops and they promote this aspect of beekeeping education as well as travelling to regional destinations in order to stage them. For further information visit their website.

Registered Charity No. 273827