bee stories

I have just got back from giving my beekeeping talk to a garden club down towards Chelmsford. They were a cheerful bunch, and the turnout seemed impressive, though I don't know how many people they normally get at a meeting, or how many of the audience were there to hear me rather than to discover the result of the President's competition, which was being unveiled on the same evening.

It was a potato growing competition, and when I arrived (rather early, but I'd sooner allow plenty of time to find an unfamiliar venue, plus extra when the A12 is involved) the potato unearthing and weighing was in full swing.  Each bag or pot of potatoes was tipped out in turn on to a plastic sheet, the potatoes gathered up, weighed and the result recorded, while the compost was swept up and returned to its pot.  The stage of the village hall began to fill with trays of potatoes and compost in a variety of bags, while more and more aspirant potato growers came in through the door. Tantalisingly, the result was held over until after my talk, but it was clear that some yields were distinctly better than others.

I'd been asked to speak for a full hour, rather than the 45 minutes that many clubs give you.  Even so, condensing the whole of beekeeping into an hour is tricky.  It forces you to leave things out, and tonight I said less about drones and mating than I probably should have.  Still, I think they got a flavour of the beekeeper's year, as I started in January with the bees quiet in their box, existing on stores, and took them through inspections, adding supers, swarming, supersedure, foraging behaviour and forage, the honey harvest and feeding, with a nod to disease, stings, and the benefits of joining your local association.  I should have gone into disease more thoroughly, but was running short on time, and you don't want to dwell for too long on the negative in what is supposed to be a light hearted general introduction.

Most of the audience looked as though they were listening, which is always a good start, and quite a few looked as though they were enjoying it, and there were questions afterwards.  There were a couple of beekeepers in the audience, and really it was very good of them to come, when I wasn't likely to tell them anything they didn't know already.  Two people allegedly came from West Bergholt specially for the bee talk, and I was told not to mind the person who went to sleep, because they always did, irrespective of subject or speaker.

The organiser was keen that I take honey to sell, so I jarred up one of my remaining buckets of 2013 honey, and sold it all.  That's a first for a bee related talk.  Either I am getting better at talking, or they are a well-heeled lot down in central Essex compared to Suffolk, or it is a straw in the wind that the economy is picking up.  I did one talk up beyond Sudbury, on bee forage, and the club chairman bought a jar, maybe to be polite, while everyone else just looked at it and muttered that there was a chap in the village selling honey for one pound fifty.  I charge a fiver for a pound jar, which is what the association charges at shows, and it is cheap at the price, given the labour involved, and the cost of sugar, frames, foundation, and varroa treatments that the bees consume on an annual basis, not to mention replacing and renewing equipment.  I've just spend twenty quid on plastic bucket feeders, and the lids will go brittle and crack in a few seasons, just like the old ones did.

The potato competition turned out to be judged on weight of crop, and not number of potatoes, to the disappointment of the man who had twenty seven tiny ones.  The winner came in at a credible eight pounds something, while the lowest scoring entry weighed four ounces.  I never asked, but I presume they started with one seed potato each, in which her four ounces may have represented a net loss of vegetable matter during the course of the competition.  The Systems Administrator asked what was to stop them going to Tesco and simply buying a bag of potatoes.