The Flow Hive

There has been some coverage in the press about a new type of bee hive, the Flow^tm hive, that will ‘revolutionise’  bee keeping and much has been made of the fact that the two Australian inventors raised over £1m in a day selling their invention on a crowdsourcing site.

In a conventional hive honey is extracted from frames called supers and I describe the process on the website at http://northbedfordshirehoney.com/honey-extraction.

The Flow^tm hive works by having special frames with part completed comb cells which the bees build up, put nectar in which they convert to honey and then cap the cells as they would do in a normal hive. The Flow^tm hive is different in that when a crank is turned the frame spits converting the closed cells into a series of channels down which the honey ‘flows’ into a channel at the bottom of the hive. The honey piped outside the hive.

The crank is then turned back and the bees eat through the cappings on the cells and start the process again.

Does it work? I don’t know but there again nobody really does as they haven’t been made yet and they won’t start to be delivered until June.
However from what I’ve seen and read , it looks like an ingenious engineering solution to a problem. Unfortunately it seems to me to be a solution to a problem that doesn’t really exist. Honey extraction is something that is only done a couple of times a year and although a bit of a slog, isn’t really a big issue. Had they invented something that effectively fought Varroa or helped in swarm management that could well be ‘revolutionary’

The two Australians who invented the device seem to be genuine people but they are often described as ‘part time inventors and backyard bee keepers] which makes we wonder if this isn’t just a technical exercise. I wonder how it deals with the tube such becoming clogged [taking the hive apart each time to clean it?] and how it deal with honey that crystallises quickly like OSR or heather and cooler weather that would slow the flow of honey

There have been comments in support of the system like “its good for people who want their own honey but are afraid of bees” and “It’s a great way to get started in beekeeping without all the bother.”, and  “You can get all the benefits of a bee hive without having to deal with bees!” which reinforces my view that it's something for people who don’t like bees and are only interested in the honey.
If people ‘are afraid of bees’, don’t want the ‘bother’ and don’t want to ‘deal with the bees’ they shouldn’t be keeping bees. Bees have enough on their plate without having to be looked after by somebody who can’t be bothered to look after them properly.

Part of the promotion of the hive is a nicely put together video which has the required blue sky time lapse photography. Two things strike me about the video. Firstly there isn’t a bee to be seen anywhere outside the hive. In my [bitter] experience a few drops of honey carelessly dropped, and a Waggle Dance later, every bee and in the neighbourhood knows all about it and comes calling. Wasps will pay a visit as well. If the tubing leaks, even a tiny amount, the hive will become a free MacDonalds for bees. Not good if you ‘are afraid of bees’ don’t want the ‘bother’.

The second issue relates to a personal hobby horse of mine on which I have already ranted about in a previous blog. It's what I call the ‘Langstroth Principle’. Langstroth was an American pastor who effectively invented the modern bee hive which was genuinely revolutionary. He said ‘The Creator intended the bee for the comfort of man, as truly as he did the horse or the cow’ Although said by a religious man in the 1850’s, I think it perfectly illustrates our current attitudes to animals and nearly everything else – ‘every thing is for our enjoyment and consumption’ .
At one point in the video two smirking hippies [probably their target audience] are seen holding a tray of waffles under the flow tube and slowly smothering them in honey, beside themselves with joy and safe in the knowledge they aren’t disturbing the bees . Apart from the fact that the bee hive entrance is  about a foot away and their precious waffles would be covered in bees [that they don’t want to deal with] in seconds, it perfectly illustrates the Langstroth Principle.
Intentionally or not the hive becomes a vehicle for satisfying our need to consume what we want, when we want it and with as little effort as possible.
It simply converts a bee hive into a vending machine.

A few days after it's release the American courts have granted a patent for a hive that is virtually identical to the Flow^Tm hive except it's made of metal.
In the patent it says the work of collecting the honey, which is long, fatiguing, and even dangerous, is converted into a short and easy operation, which can be performed by any person.
Long?, possibly [the Flow hives takes two hours to empty in warm Australian weather], fatiguing?, possibly and obviously a little physical effort is bad for you, and dangerous?. Crap.
If a patent appears so quickly after the release of the Flow hive, I expect it won’t be long before cheap Chinese copies that don’t work will appear on beeBay.

Time will tell if it's revolutionary or not. I seem to recall Clive Sinclair described the C5 as revolutionary.

Manuka Honey

Due to something coming up unexpectedly, my planned exit from Facebook has been temporarily delayed and I have something important to tell you.
Today I finally got the last piece of evidence I needed to prove a theory I have long held to be true.
Aware that it would not be universally popular, over the years I have been quietly working away collecting evidence from the media, personal experience, research and observation to support my theory. However it seemed that the last piece of the jigsaw, that last final scrap of information that pulled everything together in to a coherent irrefutable statement of fact was always just tantalisingly out of reach and at times I wondered if my life’s work would ever reach a conclusion.

However today, completely unexpectedly, that last shred of evidence appeared before me, calmly smiling as if to say ‘Don’t worry, your journey is at an end. What you need is here, your mission is complete. Now go and tell everyone your message’.
I have got to know somebody who comes to the Stony Stratford market [Hi Lynda!] and I am going to make some raspberry lime jam for her. Limes aren’t always easy to get so I set off this morning on a tour of the local supermarkets looking for them. Normally I would have started at Tesco’s but for some strange reason I found myself pulling up in the car park of Waitrose.
I would like to make it very clear I am not a Waitrose regular customer. I do not have a white Range Rover Evoque or Audi TT [I have a tatty blue Land Rover Discovery], do not own a beige Labrador [I have two mental Cocker spaniels], don’t wear pastel shade sports casual clothes [it is said I make Compo out of Last of the Summer Wine look like Gok Wan] nor watch Escape to The Country or Country File [I prefer Cops and The Dog Whisperer].
Yet today I found myself in Waitrose. I found the limes and raspberries I needed but instead of getting out as soon as I could in case I was spotted by someone I knew, I found myself unable to leave. I seemed to sense Something Wonderful Was About To Happen and I was drawn to the far side of the store.
As I approached one isle I was aware of a bright light and faint angelic voices singing in the background, and I seemed to float in mid air towards the bright light.
And there it was. The final piece of evidence I needed to complete my life’s work. At first I struggled to comprehend what I could see in front of me. Was it a practical joke? Perhaps it was the effects of consuming too much North Bedfordshire Honey MKII honeycomb, although with the help of my family and carefully targeted medication, I have this mostly under control.
So finally I accepted I what I saw in front of me. The final evidence I have been searching for.
A jar of Manuka honey costing £32.


So dear Hive Huggers, although announcements will be made in all the press, Sky, BT, and all media channels later today, you can be the first to know the truth:-
As a species we are doomed.
 

Up to now the existence of Jeremy Kyle, Adam Sandler box sets, disinfectant’s that can’t kill 100% of all known germs and patio heaters have only indicated the truth but the fact that somebody thinks it's a good idea to charge £32 for a jar of honey and that there are people stupid enough to pay it, is the final evidence I needed.
So much is made of this horrible over priced, over hyped muck and it's magical powers that between now and our eventual demise, I intend adding a spoonful of creosote and some potting compost to my honey and selling it as Manooka honey for £20 a spoonful. In time I will receive grateful testimonials about how it has cured baldness, how the leg that fell off has miraculously regrown, how it has made Keith Lemon hilariously funny and how smearing in on the feet of a overweight asthmatic 65 year old has transformed him into a gold medal contender for the 100 meters at the Rio Olympics.

There is evidence that Manuka honey, in a highly refined and processed state, could help with wounds, but as for anything else ‘special’, I’m afraid no.
However people will continue to pay £32 for honey despite the fact that:-
It doesn’t look, smell or taste very nice - Manuka honey has a strong flavour, which has been characterised as, "earthy, oily, herbaceous", and "florid, rich and complex". It is described by the New Zealand honey industry as having a "damp earth, heather, aromatic" aroma and a "mineral, slightly bitter" flavour. [Wikipedia] ‘damp earth’ – yummy!
It has very thixotropic properties. This means that it is gel-like in liquid form.

As a result of this New Zealand bee keepers couldn’t give it away and used it to feed bees and add it to cattle feed as a cheap alternative to molasses, until it's ‘miracle’ properties were discovered.

There has been widespread selling of fake Manuka honey According to research by UMFHA, the main trade association of New Zealand mānuka honey producers, whereas 1,700 tons of mānuka honey are made there annually representing almost all the world's production, some 10,000 tons of produce is being sold internationally as mānuka honey, including 1,800 tons in the UK.’

The NHS say :-
'It is important to note that the honey used in the trials was filtered, medical-grade honey with all impurities removed. People should not try using honey bought from supermarkets to treat wounds at home', and
'However, one salient point missing from the news coverage of the study is that it was funded and partly carried out by a company called Comvita, which supplies medical grade honey.

Boots the chemist say:-
'Evidence is limited on whether or not manuka honey has any effect on conditions like high cholesterol, diabetes, cancer, inflammation, eye, ear, and sinus infections and gastrointestinal problems', and
'The honey used to treat wounds is a medical-grade honey. It is specially sterilised and prepared as a dressing, not just a jar from a shelf in a kitchen'.

Webmd:-
'Manuka honey is also marketed for use in many other conditions. These include preventing and treating cancer, reducing high cholesterol, reducing systemic inflammation, treating diabetes, treating eye, ear, and sinus infections, treating gastrointestinal problem but the evidence is limited on whether or not manuka honey is effective for these conditions'.

It does also prove the power of the placebo effect and I wouldn’t be surprised if following a surprise reduction of the price of Manuka honey, it suddenly disappeared from the shelves of Waitrose, Holland & Barratt and the ‘my body is a temple’ health food shops and deli’s.
After all who would pay £1 a pint for a ‘miracle food’?

Top of Form

15th February 2015 - The Forest Centre

Greetings Friends of Apis mellifera and may the fudge be with you [for £1 a bag].

I’ve been looking forward to this market for a while; I think it's always a bit exciting to be involved in something from the very start. I hadn’t been to the Forest Centre for a while so went there the previous Monday to have a look round. Despite the market not being for a week, there were posters everywhere and in the cafeteria on every table was a display advertising the market and on a rolling event display screen they had pages for the event and a couple of the stalls. They had already sent something out to everyone on their email list, had a section on their website about it and put an entry in Oracle magazine.



I decided to arrive early and as I got to Marston I found Josna [Indian Orchard] driving around looking a bit lost. We joined up and headed off to the Centre to find Zena and a couple of other stallholders already setting up.
 
As a lot of us hadn’t met before we had a good chat and then I realised the market was opening soon and I hadn’t set up either stall.
Next I panicked when it dawned on me I had left the tasters, fudge and legendary Honeycomb MKII [@North Bedfordshire Honey [Global Holdings] Ltd] at home. I blackmailed persuaded my daughter Nikkie, who was looking after Sue Lang's Black Cat Farm Shop stall, to shoot home to get them.
I had bought a laptop with me to show bee related videos and although I had used it before, it wouldn’t work and yet again technology let me down. Technology is after all a word for something that doesn’t work yet.

Finally I sorted myself out and the day started. And a very good day it was too..
Despite the concerns of the Centre that it might be a bit quiet, it was anything but. Lots of people came through the market and the whole atmosphere was very positive.

After the market was over all the stall holders agreed the day had been a great success, two of the stall holders nearly sold out and Sue’s/Nikkie’s jams went well. Everybody has signed up for the next 3 events.
Despite being an eccentric millionaire who just uses markets as a means of meeting taxpayers, even I was pleased with how things went and also in the interest in bees and beekeeping generally.

The Forest Centre were also very happy with the day saying we’re really pleased with the feedback that we received both from stallholders and members of the public and We’re delighted that the relaunched Farmers’ market had such success on it’s opening weekend and we hope for even more visitors as the weather picks up, next month onwards
They also posted this on their web site
http://marstonvale.org/farmers-market-fun/

More stalls have signed up for future markets and it can only go from strength to strength.
At the risk of sounding like an Oscar winner, I would like to thank The Academy Zena for organising the market, Sam, and her staff at the Centre for all their support, and you The Great British Honey Loving Public for coming along [starts sobbing, floods of tears and collapses on floor]
 

January 2015

6th January

I hadn't really expected to have a look at the hives yet as it had been so cold recently but when I moved the hives from Roxton to Ravensden, two of the hive tables collapsed and needed repair. I also needed to have a check on the various bits of equipment as the main bee keeping equipment supplier was having its sale and so it was a good time to get what I needed for the coming season.
The temperature was ~10 degress and it was a nice day so I thought I would do a bit of repair work and preparation.
I took The Boys with me and they did their usual 'vampire' thing where they stay outside the apiary and wait until invited in. Jarvis is anaphylactic so I always worry about him with the bees but he and Charlie have now learnt they mustn't come into the apiary unless I call them and they just root about in the fields outside.
After fixing one of the tables, I had a quick look at the Poly Nuc which is a polystyrene starter hive that housed the swarm I collected last year.  Polystyrene has good insulation properties making a good vehicle to get a relatively small colony through the winter before being transferred into a full sized hive in the Spring.
There was a small woodpecker hole in the roof and I gently eased the roof off. Under the roof is a clear perspex cover and I was delighted to see some bees slowly come up to the perspex. They have survived !!!!!!
It is still far too cold to take frames out of a hive to inspect them as they will lose heat that would be difficult to replace, but I just couldn't resist having a quick peek under the crown board to see how things were going with the other hives.
The next two hives had active bees but then the first disappointment. The WBC hive hadn't made it.


Fortunately the Mad Vicar's Bees, the Snow Queen Hive and the Nutters [I'm afraid I do give my colonies names] but then the next disappointment. The Top Bar Hive colony didn't make it.
This hive had been an experiment for 2014. It is widely used in Africa and in the UK are often used by devotees of 'natural' bee keeping. I have something about them on the web site - Bee Informed > Types of Hive.
It didn't get the same chemical medication as the other hives so was this to blame? I don't know but once the hive has been repaired [it started to bow during the Summer] I intend putting another colony in it.
As it warmed up, bees started to emerge from the hives but just did very short flights or just crawled around on the landing boards.
As the 3 colonies in Scald End appear to be OK, I have lost 2 out of 11. Two is two too many but as the average loss in the UK is 35-40%, I suppose it could have been worse.
A new package of bees [a queen and a load of bees in a box] is £150 a time, so this year I will make a proper attempt at rearing my own queens, make better use of the Queen cells the hives produce and put a couple of swarm boxes up at Scald End.

8th January

One of the major problems bees face is the Varroa mite and it is considered to be main cause of honey bee loss. I will be doing something about Varroa in the 'Its Not easy being a Bee' section in 'Bee Informed' on the web site.
It is a reddish crab like mite, about 1.5mm, that lays its eggs in the honey bee comb. The mites hatch and attach themselves to the bees.                             
These charming creatures stick a feeding spike between the 'plates' on the bees body and drinks its haemolymph [blood]. It also spreads diseases like Deformed Wing Virus.
It's full name is Varroa destructor which says it all.
It has proved to be impossible to eradicate and Australia is now the only Continent that is varroa free. Therefore bee keepers are encourage to adopt what is known as an Integrated Pest Management System, which basically means don't rely on just one method of trying to deal with varroa. This is a huge area and the source of constant debate but I can only cover what I do.
The first thing I do at the beginning of the year is to treat the bees with a dilute solution of Oxalic Acid. This is fairly unpleasant stuff but it does kill the mites. Problem is it also kills brood so it is done at the beginning of the year before the queen starts laying again.
Bee farmers with far more hives than I have would buy OA crystals and mix it themselves but I buy a 100ml bottle of Oxalic Acid in syrup solution that does 10 hives.
It is drizzled onto the bees in the seams between the frames and I use a syringe with a tube going into the acid mixture that refills it self and means it can be done more quickly than using a normal syringe so less heat is lost from the hive.
I did the Ravensden bees first without too much drama although the woodpecker damage to the Poly Nuc was worse than I first thought. Predictably the BB's took it upon themselves to make it very clear they resented the intrusion and would I mind going away and leaving them along.
When I arrived at Scald End all three hives had lots of flying bees although they weren't going very far. The smoker fuel had got a bit damp and took ages to get alight and in the meantime the temperature must have dropped slightly so by the time I was ready to administer the OA, they had all retreated to the hives,
The first hive was done without a problem and then as I started the second, a sharp pain in my cheek. A bee was inside my veil. In fact several were as yet again I had forgotten to do the zips up properly. I made a strategic retreat and two stings later returned to complete the job.

12th January
Although hopefully the bees have put aside enough honey to last them through the winter, beeks are advised to check them and, to use an Old English word, 'heft' them. This means lifting them to see how heavy they are. It is possible these days to buy electronic surveillance equipment that tells you how heavy the hive is, what the temperature is inside the hive, monitors the sound levels, what they are watching on television and their Facebook status. Its stupidly expensive.
Like us, bees  need to get rid of any excess water they take on. In Winter its so cold they can't get out of the hive to have a pee and if they do it in the hive, things get a bit unpleasant.
Therefore you feed them with fondant, which like the icing on birthday cakes, and has a very low water content. I dropped lumps on this into the hives through holes in the Crown Board for them to feed on.
One of the hives in Ravensden looked worryingly small.

28 January

Weather still horribly cold. Had a tiny, quick peek under the Crown Board of the 'worrying' hive and it hasn't made it.
The hive I promised to Jack is due to travel to Norfolk in a few weeks time and therefore I think I need to add to my flock.
Speaking to Sue Lang, he has said the shop now takes up a lot of her time so she will be cutting back on her bee keeping and will be selling some of her hives. Its too cold at the moment, so we will sort something out in March.
I might also contact Steve Kennedy a fellow BBKA member, who produces very good queens and nucs [small starter hives].
 

December 2014 - The Bees

We first started keeping bees about seven years ago when the local farmer offered to sell a piece of land to everyone in the road where we lived. We weren't that keen gardeners so didn't really know what to do with it but to my surprise it turned out Sue, my wife, had an interest in bees since she was very little and although he had read a lot about them ,had never actually kept bees.
So we bought a hive [a WBC], joined the Bedfordshire Beekeepers Association and did their starters course. The Association had a system where you could join their Swarm List where swarms reported to and collected by the Association, would be given out for free.
One memorable Sunday after we had finished one of the training sessions, we were told there was a swarm to be collected from Turvey. Peter , a Association member took us there, still in our full  kit, and when we arrived a neighbour was in the front garden cutting the grass. You could almost hear his jaw hit the ground as the car doors opened and we emerged dressed up like something from Ghostbusters.
The swarm was about the size of melon and in a small bush in the back garden. Peter carefully transferred it into a box and we left it to settle. We collected it the following day, transferred it to our shiny new hive and our beekeeping started.
One hive, became two until we got up to 5. For various reasons, not least one of my dogs turned out to be anaphylactic [see Stings in Bee Informed on the website], the hives were moved around until they were settled at the house of Mark and Val who owned a farm produce shop in Roxton.
All was well until the winter 2010/11. When I could finally check the hives in the Spring there was ominously little activity and when they were opened I could see all 5 colonies had died.

To state the obvious bees aren't like dogs or cats where you have some sort of relationship [although I do talk to them a lot], but I was devastated.
The winter had been too cold and too wet for too long and they ran out of food, and the frames were full of dead bees with thousands of them with their heads in cells looking for food.
As a package of bees alone can cost £150, it took a little while to build things up again and eventually  replaced 3 of them at Roxton and the local farmer who owned the farmland around our house in Ravensden agreed to let me keep a couple of hives in a field opposite my house.
However when Mark and Val moved I had to find somewhere to keep the Roxton bees. At the same time I was thinking of possibly getting some more hives because of the markets I had started to go to.
Next thing I know I get an email from the Association saying someone had 3 hives for sale and I got the new colonies from Ed, a fellow Bedfordshire Beekeeper Association member.
The bees were being kept on the Open University campus in Milton Keynes which means they are highly intelligent and when I saw them for the first time I could hear things like 'to bee or not to bee that is the question' and 'I buzz therefore I am' coming from the hives.

Unfortunately Ed found himself caught up in a web of health and safety nonsense which included having to have a University security guard accompany him every time he went to see the bees in case he had an anaphylactic reaction. Whether or not the guard was a trained nurse is unclear.
Anaphylaxis is a serious issue but really.........
I understand the University also intended issuing Ed with hi tec protective headgear to protect himself from being struck by a meteorite and also be issued with a specially designed klaxon to frighten away the herds of buffalo that wander around the Milton Keynes area in a desperate search for honey to which they are addicted..
You just can't be too careful.
Anyway, Ed decided enough was enough and that the bees had to go.

By the time the bees were ready for collection, I had arranged with Scald End Farm in Thurleigh to keep the new bees there and I have a 3 acre field all to myself.
Moving bees, along with eating parsnips, watching Adam Sandler films and listening to the Beach Boys, is one of my least favourite things to do and there have been occasions where bees have escaped when being moved around.
However things didn't go too badly and I drove very slowly from Milton Keynes to Scald End without any problems.

The following day I moved the hives from Roxton to Ravensden and I now have 3 hives in Scald End and eight in Ravensden although one of them may go to Norfolk to be looked after by Mark and Val's son who had started beekeeping with me during the Summer.
This time of year is very quiet and the main thing I do is worry about the bees making it through the winter. Hopefully they have enough honey to last them and I put lumps of fondant in the hive to help them out. During the Spring they can be fed with syrup [1:1 water/sugar mixture] but like us they need to get rid of water which they do by what are known politely as 'cleansing flights' In Winter its too cold for them to leave the hive and if they can't get rid of the water, things get a bit unpleasant in the hive.
Fondant, which is like the icing on birthday cakes, has very little water and so gets over this problem.

At some point in the next week when there is a warm'ish day, I will treat the hives with Oxalic Acid. This is a treatment for the Varroa mite which is one of the biggest threats to honey bees. I will put some info about this nasty little critter on the site soon.
Apart from this there are frames and supers to be cleaned and made ready for the Spring, nuc boxes to get ready, swarm boxes to build, sorting out my garage for an Environmental Health visit in the Spring, woodpecker damage to the hives to be repaired,  etc etc.
Also the biggest provider of beekeeping equipment has its annual sale. 
I need to sell more honey........

December 2014

'What could go wrong?'
Actually quite a lot.

I arrived at Willington a little nervously, and my nervousness increased when I realised the market was held in the car park - I had assumed it would be held on the grass by the entrance. This meant I had no way of securing my flimsy gazebo, which had the structural strength of wet tissue paper, and anything more than a sneeze would send me and the gazebo careering down the A1 like Mary Poppins.
The needle on the 'nervousness meter' then flicked into the red when the paste table I bought with me decided it didn't need legs after all and collapsed.
Thankfully the Willington Manager kindly lent me a table from her office and eventually I got underway. Gradually my nervousness subsided and I quite enjoyed the day.
People were very friendly, a number of people wanted to discuss bee stuff with me and the other stall holders were very supportive and I picked up a lot of good advice from them.
I even sold some honey.
The following day the directors of North Bedfordshire Honey held an Executive Policy and Planning meeting and the Managing Director, Production Director, Research and Development Director [me] and the Sales Director, Marketing and Customer Liaison Director [Sue] decided we would develop a Integrated Long Term Strategic Development Plan.
And buy a proper gazebo.

Then it all went a bit bonkers.
Firstly, a week after the Willington market I get a copy of an email from Frosts announcing they were cancelling the market. Was it something I said?
Then a few days later, Val and Mark who had let me keep some of my bees on their land and ran a garden shop in Roxton where i sold a small amount of honey, decided they would retire to Norfolk which meant I would have to find a new home for the bees and my delusions of being the first Bedfordshire honey millionaire seemed to come to an end.
It then transpired that their shop was being bought by Sue Laing who I knew from being members of the Bedfordshire Beekeepers Association. Sue attended several markets selling her honey and jams and obviously wouldn't need honey from me but as she would be running the shop over the weekends she couldn't do her markets as well.
She asked me if I wanted to do them.
Having already missed one 'Slippery Slope' sign I then completely missed the 'Pay attention. This is the second slippery slope warning notice. Don't ignore this one' sign and said 'yes'.
Next thing I know I'm going to places I've never heard of [Hexton, Hoxton?], finding fudge recipes, making marmalade, setting up a website , meeting Environmental Health people and spending loads of money.
And going to markets.

Which has been fun and I've really enjoyed them. People have been very nice, [there was one rather eccentric gentleman at Stony but he was eccentric with everyone so I didn't take it personally] and seem genuinely interested in bees, other stall holders have been very supportive.
And I've even managed to sell some honey.

Its going to be quiet for a while as Willington don't have another market until April and the new Home and Gardens market for January won't be on.
However, I now go to the Potton Four Seasons market and in February a new market at the Forest Centre in Marston Vale is starting up. Also I am thinking of trying to get into the Shefford Market and one or two others. I was invited to Franklins farmers market and other stall holders tell me this will happen more as my 'fame' spreads, so perhaps I might be a millionaire after all.
But enough about the markets, the blog is supposed to be primarily about the bees and once Christmas has subsided I will post something.

September 2014

Until quite recently my beekeeping was an interest and the honey my bees produced was given away to friends, family and people in the village where I live.
Also postmen, DHL delivery drivers, BT engineers and the nurses who came to look after a neighbour all enjoyed my honey for free.
I had tried selling honey outside my house primarily to people who came to pick up their kids from the school in the Close but as not everybody paid, I reasoned why try and sell it and get stressed when people didn't pay for it when I could give it away for free and not get stressed. Made sense to me.
Some of my bees were kept on the land of some friends who as well as running a veg box service where a box of fresh local vegetables were delivered to you once a week, also ran a Garden Shop at a local garden centre selling all sorts of local produce. Their son also helped me with the bees.
They asked me if I could supply them with honey which I was more than happy to do but I remember feeling a momentary slight pang of unease.
I had read a book on 'natural beekeeping' in which the author suggested that beeks needed to decide if they were 'bee keepers' or 'honey producers'.
I consider myself very much a 'bee keeper' and so as long as my bees are healthy and viable, the amount of honey I get from them is secondary and if things are tough for them then I will have to disappoint DHL delivery drivers et all.
One of the things I tried this year was to produce cut comb which is essentially a slab of honey comb, wax and all, in a plastic container. A while back I had tried specialised wooden frames which didn't work well so I decided to use unwired, thin foundation in the frames. I would then use a form of biscuit cutter to get the comb.
This went well and I produced a number of what looked satisfactory combs and I even got some labels printed.
My wife was helping with a musical festival in Clophill and thought she would take some of our honey and cut comb to sell. Although for some reason it is considered a 'premium product' its not widely available so I had no idea what to charge and took to Google for information.
One beek said he sold loads of it at Farmers Markets he went to to and even though I am a 'bee keeper' not a 'honey producer' for some reason I thought 'Mmmmmm Farmers Markets - what are they all about?'
So I Googled 'Bedfordshire Farmers Markets' and there were loads of them.
I knew about the one in the centre of Bedford in the pedestrian precinct and thought 'No thanks' but there was one at Willington Garden Centre which is quite close to me. They seem to sell more soft furnishings, children's toys and pink Pringle jumpers than plants but it seemed a reasonable place to start.
At that point I completely missed the warning sign saying 'Warning Slippery Slope Ahead!!. Its very steep and its very slippery. If you have an obsessive nature please turn back now' and emailed them. I explained I didn't produce a lot of honey but they were very nice about it all and said I could have a stall if I wanted one.
I then missed the next warning sign saying 'Warning - you have just ignored a slippery slope sign. If you proceed you will spend large amounts of time and money and risk ridicule from friends and family'.
I emailed them back saying I would like to have a stall at the next market.
What could go wrong?.................................................