Everyone is welcome to our meetings held in the Church Hall at 7.30pm on the 3rd Monday of each month. Contact the Mothers' Union secretary for details.
This page reflects on past meetings and looks forward to future ones.
July 2010
OUr Homemade cake stall was very successful and we would like to say a big thank you to all who made and bought cakes or helped in any way.
Our guest speaker for May, Jenny Hyde, gave a lighthearted talk about bees. Bees, or rather the lack of them, have been much in the media recently. Their declining numbers are a source of concern to fruit growers as the humble honey bee is the most important pollinator and without pollination the fruit (especially apples) would not develop.
Jenny told us that bees have played a part in our lives since the dawn of history. The ancient Egyptians placed honey cake in their tombs to feed their dead in the next world, the Greek gods referred to honey as nectar and in Biblical times the Israelites were promised a land 'flowing with milk and honey'.
Some of our everyday expressions refer to bees, we all know 'busy bee' and 'beeline'. Honeymoon can be traced back centuries when honey was thought to be an aphrodisiac and fed to the bridegroom! Maiden flight refers to the first and only flight made by a queen bee when searching for a new home.
Bees live in communities, each colony has been performed different tasks, guarding the entrance, nest building, brook caretaking, queen caretaking and foragers which are the ones we see most.
As a pure substance honey has many healing properties and is used widely in modern medicine as well as in familiar favourite home remedies. Beeswax is a wax secreted by the bees and when refined used in the preservation and polish of wood. Church candles all contain beeswax and Jenny invited us to try our hand at making beeswax candles.
Our meeting on Monday 21st June will be a Deanery festival when we will be joined by members from Ampthill and Flitwick. There will be a short Eucharist service in church at 7pm followed in the church hall by a talk by the Revd. Janet Ridgeway on he Mothers' Union theme for this year 'Relationship not Rules'.
On Monday 19th July we welcome a returning speaker Janet Stowe who has chosen Cinderella as the title of her talk.
Information about previous meetings has been archived, but remains available.