I spent today at The Tendring Show. This is a delightful agricultural show, and the beekeepers run a stand every year. We stage a honey show, sell honey plus wax candles and cakes, offer a honey tasting and rolled candle making for children, and talk to members of the public about beekeeping with the aid of props including a beehive, an extractor, numerous beekeeping tools and posters, and two observation hives containing honey bees and a bumble bee nest. I am always rostered to help man this last section, I think on the grounds that I talk to strangers in my day job and am happy initiating conversations. It is always great fun, and today was no exception. We had a huge number of people coming through our tent, some of whom were seriously thinking of keeping bees themselves, some who were interested in the beekeeping activities of a friend or neighbour even if they didn't want to do it themselves, and a lot who had just wandered in. Quite a few of those discovered that bees were more interesting than they'd thought.
The observation hives are great aids. The honey bee hive consists of three brood frames of bees removed from their usual hive for the day and sandwiched between two panes of glass, with some mesh to ventilate them at the bottom. Since they got too hot a couple of years ago when it was very sunny they now have air conditioning in the form of a battery driven fan from an old laptop which drives extra air through the hive. This year's queen was a natural performer, remaining visible all day on the face of the comb and even laying eggs, and attracting a retinue of worker bees stroking her with their antennae to absorb her smell. Last year's queen hid round the side of the frame most of the time, and wasn't any help at all. We also have a perspex lidded box with the bumble bee nest in it, connected by a short length of hose to a perspex box containing flowers, which we spray with sugar water so the bumbles come out and feed.
A few of the children thought that the bees were frightening or yukky, but most people seemed interested in what they were doing, and how beekeepers got honey. Suddenly things they had noticed, like the way that a neighbour's beehive sometimes got taller and then shorter, made sense to them. There is no doubting that all the media cover in the past few years of the problems facing bees, plus the bunting-festooned general zeitgeist of grow your own, jam making and backyard chickens, have created a great spirit of goodwill towards bees. Membership of our association has soared in the past couple of years. Not everybody who starts will keep it up, but I'm sure some will.
I did three stints on the stand, but the other half of the time was my own to go and look at the rest of the show. Tendring is smaller than the county shows, but much more focused on the agricultural and rural. There were classes for cattle, sheep and goats, mostly rare breeds including longhorn cattle with great curving horns, and Wensleydale sheep that have ultra-long coats in dreadlocks. There was a poultry tent, and all the local hound packs were there, the fox hounds and the blood hounds and the beagles. There were heavy horses. I missed most of the horse parade in the main ring because I was on duty with the beekeepers at that point, but I saw Suffolks being driven in harness. They are incredibly rare, fewer than 500 registered animals in the world.
There were working dog displays, some highly disciplined and some totally disorganised, and dog agility demonstrations, and demonstrations of hawks flying. The hawks when not flying sat each on their own perch just next to our stand, and at the end of the day were fitted with little eyeless masks, each with a spike on top like a nineteenth century military helmet, to keep them calm while they were transported home. There was a man from the Essex Bat Group who had two orphaned pipistrelles in a sock tucked inside his shirt, and I watched while he fed one of them with a tiny syringe, and wiped its face with a damp cotton bud afterwards. At home he kept them in the airing cupboard. There were stands for the wildfowlers, and the RSPB (who don't have contradictary aims, as most of Hamford Water is owned and managed by wildfowl groups, and they know exactly what they are permitted to shoot) and the Essex Wildlife Trust.
There was a thatcher, and a firm that would sort out your septic tank, and a woodburning stove company (who we don't speak to any more since they sold us the most unreliable range since the dawn of time). Then there were non-agricultural but useful organisations like the Fire Brigade, complete with fire engine and campaigning for smoke alarms, and the RNLI, with lifeboat and campaigning for funds. There were the Colchester Morris Men. I love morris dancing, despite the barrage of ridicule R4 has directed at it over the past quarter of a century. They must be a happy side, as they have a very low turnover of dancers. I recognised most of the faces from previous years.
There were food stands, and I bought some cherries and some apple juice, and I found my usual beeswax handcream supplier in the poultry tent, which seemed odd until she explained she had brought geese as well as handcream. There were some stands selling plants and crafts and clothes, but not so many that it didn't feel like an agricultural show. Likewise, one local garage had a stand but it was mainly bona fide farm machinery on show.
There were lots and lots of dogs, all apparently enjoying themselves very much. The Suffolk Show this year banned dogs, on the grounds that the fouling problem was upsetting people, and I was so disgusted that I e-mailed the Tendring Show website saying I hoped they weren't going to do the same thing, and was amazed to get a reply straight back saying no, the dogs were part of the fun. I like dogs very much, though we stick with cats ourselves, and it is always a hoot to see the variety on offer, from tiny terriers to vast mastiffs, all behaving themselves nicely and socialising with the other dogs while the humans socialise with each other. I didn't even see any dog mess. I did meet my former GP, a former colleague, who was with a friend who had a lovely little 1930s Morris in the vintage car display, a current colleague, and the editor of the veg and fruit magazine who doesn't want a beekeeping column at the moment.
It didn't even rain at all until a quarter to five. Tendring is a really good show, and next year I must remember to flag it a couple of weeks before the day, to encourage everyone else to go as well. You will find me in the beekeeping tent (some of the time).
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