Emley Show 2013

A couple of weeks ago was the Emley show. Last year I managed to win a class in the honey section but this year I was unable to enter the same class; it was for novices and can only be entered once. This year I had to go up against the people who have been keeping Bees for much longer. I'll cut straight to the chase and say that this year I didn't win anything in the honey class. One of my friends did enter and he was a lot more successful getting 3 awards and it was his first time showing honey. Comparing his honey and mine it was clear his was superior. My honey is clear but his is super clear; he used a much finer filter than I did so next year I will try to get hold of one myself.

My Dad had good results in the horticulture section winning in the cucumber and broad bean section and getting various 2nd's and 3rd's elsewhere. The full results are here. I entered a couple of exhibits in the flower section and got a 2nd and a 3rd. Next year my Dad will probably enter even more.

I didn't take as many photos as last year but the ones I did take are below. There seem to be more chicken pictures than anything else!

I'm Back!

After quite a long hiatus I have returned to the blogging world. It's not like I haven't had anything to blog about, on the contrary, I have had lots to write about but due to the time lapsed I think it would be better to bring you up to date with a summary. First off I will give an explanation to my lapse in writing. There were a few factors but firstly was ill health which I will say little of other than our toilet roll expenditure went up somewhat for a period. Then when all was settling down in the bowel department I was hit hard with the loss of a close friend. Along with me loosing my Bees and 3 out of our 5 chickens dying in quick succession I have just not felt like writing. Now I feel like enough time has passed and the amount I need to blog about has built up so I have lots to catch up on.

Anyway onto the summary. I have started a few new batches of wine, 2 made with dandelion, 1 with rhubarb and then a week or two later I made another batch with rhubarb. The dandelion wines are slightly different from one another as I have used red grape juice in one and white grape juice in the other. The recipe is here in the comments section of a previous post. I will write it up eventually and add it to the recipe page (eventually being the operative word). The batches of rhubarb wine are both the same recipe, the only difference is the size of the batch, the first is only 1 gallon but the second batch is 5 gallons! Keeping on the theme of wine I have also bottled 2 gallons of elderberry wine and started drinking it. I'm sure it'll taste better when it has aged more but at the moment it is drinkable and the further down the bottle I got the easier it was to drink although I had a headache at the end!

The land my Dad recently acquired is coming on nicely with more than a little help from my brother in law Lee, although in truth my Dad has done more work than should be expected of a 65 year old! He is a Yorkshire man though so a bit of hard graft doesn't scare him. I have mucked in as much as I've been able to, but due to there being no toilet down there I had a long period where I didn't dare go down there! Between us we have moved loads of clay and exposed the workable land beneath, then covered it in manure in preparation for next year. There is still loads to do down there and now the weather has improved it has got a bit overgrown in a lot of areas but we are working on it a bit at a time and large areas are covered with old carpets for the time being to keep the weeds down. All the trees that were moved down there are coming along nicely but won't produce much fruit this year. This is of little concern, the main thing is that they have plenty of leaves and are putting out new growth. With any luck next year will be a bumper crop!

I never got round to writing up about the last Wakefield and Pontefract Beekeepers Association meeting and now can't remember enough to do it justice. The main subject was on the Warre hive which is a form of top bar hive that involves making tall stack of boxes. One of the big differences with the style of Beekeeping is that rather than adding boxes to the top for the Bees to store honey in you add boxes underneath and the Bees move their brood rearing area down and start storing honey above; this has the advantage that it means the brood is always built on new comb. I may do a more detailed blog about the Warre hive at some point but as my knowledge on the subject is limited I may wait until I know more.

To finish off I will just mention one small last thing....... I have bought a new colony of Bees!!!! Ok, so it is more than a small thing, rather large to be honest and as this post has reached a fair length I will write a separate post for the new Bees!

A Buzz About Life

This may come as a bit of a surprise, especially to those who know me, but I'm getting a little bored with how my posts are going. Basically there is only so much I can say about the same thing; For example my weekly hive inspections when everything goes good and nothing out of the normal happens, they always sound more or less the same. Also when I'm making a home brew beer kit, they are the same procedure each time.

So what am I going to do about it? I'm certainly not going to stop writing as I really enjoy doing so. However I have decided to broaden the subject matter somewhat and rebrand my blog. As the title suggests my new name for the blog will probably be "A Buzz About Life" and will now include home baking, veg growing and possibly a few mentions of the chickens and anything else that relates to our version of "The good life". By doing this it will also allow Steph to get more involved as she does most of the baking (at least the successful baking!), and technically the chickens are hers anyway. This will also allow for more photos as well.

Does this mean I won't be posting about the Bees as much? The answer is no, the volume of Bee (and brewing) posts should stay the same, however the contents of the posts will be reduced to just include a quick summary. If I'm doing anything new or more complex then I will probably post as before. I hope this doesn't put anybody off reading but hopefully this will involve my family more and for those who don't know me in person will get to know more about me. By the time you are reading this post some of the visual changes to the layout may have happened but if not then they are coming soon.

Emley Show 2012

Although the title of this post is Emley Show 2012 I am going to start by giving a quick update on some other things I've been doing. Since my last post I have been to see my bees but there was nothing new to report that warranted a full post, I still have 2 hives doing well and 1 not doing as well. Hopefully in the next few days I'll be able to give a better update on them. I have also been busy with my homebrew and have caught up with racking all my wine as well as making and bottling a 40 pint batch of bitter; that just needs leaving for a few weeks to mature then we can drink it.

Onto the main subject of this post, The Emley Show. For my readers who haven't heard of the Emley Show more details can be found here. It is basically an agricultural and craft show which feature classes in honey, jam, vegetables, animals and other crafts. Being that I have recently harvested some honey from my bees I made the decision to enter 1 of the honey classes; I would have entered more classes but didn't have enough honey to do so, hopefully next year will be different. As I was entering something, Steph decided she would have a go also and made some red gooseberry and elderflower jam to enter in the jam category.

As we both had entries we had to get up early to enter them. We left our daughter at home with Steph's aunt, who had stayed the night to allow us to get there early without having to worry about getting a toddler ready also! Upon arrival to the area of the show we hit heavy traffic which was entering the site and I was fearful that we wouldn't make it in time to enter our exhibits. Once we were parked up we went straight for the honey tent as closing time for entrants was half an hour earlier than for jam. When we arrived at the honey tent there were several familiar faces from my association running the stalls. I was a few minutes past closing time but they let me off and accepted my entry. They even assisted me putting the labels on correctly, making sure they were the correct distance from the bottom and on straight. The class I entered required 2 1lbs jars of any type of honey from a novice beekeeper. After we had entered mine we rushed over to the craft tent where the jam class was being held and entered Steph's jar of jam (in my opinion hers was the best presented as some people were using old jars with plastic lids, Steph was using brand new jars. That's my opinion anyway).

When we had entered our exhibits we took the short drive home to pick up Aunt Lyn and our daughter. Upon re-arriving at the show there was a quick downpour of rain so we scrambled to get the rain cover over Lauren's buggy, then within a few minutes of it starting to rain it stopped again! I was really expecting it to be like this all day but thankfully it stopped and was nice for the rest of the day (a little too nice to be honest, Steph got sunburnt!). When we were all in the show ground the first thing we saw were some sheep. We next walked up into the main area and on the way we saw some rather large bulls. We decided to have a quick bite to eat at the venison stall, I had the special of the day which was a wild boar sausage with venison liver and bacon. It was OK but it was the first time I've eaten liver in years and thought it was a bit dry, though I wasn't too bad either.

After lunch we had a wander around looking at the various craft stalls and the honey tent where they had the observation hive. They were giving out stickers to any one who could see the Queen. I'm not sure if Lauren saw the Queen but she got a sticker anyway. They hadn't judged the honey yet so we left to continue looking around. In another tent there were the poultry classes so we had a look at the various chickens, bantams, cockerels and ducks. It's amazing how many different varieties there are but I didn't see any ex battery hens like ours, in the future it would be nice to see this and then we could have entered one of our ginger ninjas! We also had a look at the rabbits that were in the next tent. Outside were stalls selling ducks and chickens, I was so tempted to buy some Indian runner ducks but resisted.

After a long day we returned to see if we had won anything. We went to the tent was that had Steph's jam. Unfortunately she hadn't won a prize, though the winning jam was also red gooseberry, next year maybe! Afterwards we headed over to the honey tent where I was delighted to find that I had won first prize! I was over the moon as that meant I could now call my honey prize winning. I received a red rosette and certificate which hopefully in years to come will be joined by many more!...... Now for the honest part. Although I did win first prize it wasn't as big an achievement as you may think as I was the only entrant! And it was the novice class but in my defence although the only entrant I did spend the time and effort to prepare my honey for show and we spoke to someone there who said that it was a very good effort and not far off being able to compete in the main classes. He gave me a few pointers for next year so watch out, next year could be mine!

All in all it was a thoroughly good day out and I would recommend it to anyone. I will certainly be returning next year if I am not working and if I am I will try to book time off. One thing we will be doing next year is entering more classes, some of the vegetable classes only had a single entrant so next year we intend to provide more competition! I have included a few photos below. I have slightly changed the layout to include a Facebook like button at the bottom, feel free to like it if you enjoyed reading!

Sheep

Lauren

Lauren Again

Lauren Yet Again!

My prize winning honey!

Lauren and Ducks!

Lauren, Lyn, Ducks and Chooks!

I soooooo wanted to take these home!

Prize winning honey again!

Beekeeping Course: Week 7

This weeks course was a special one for me as it was the first I had attended as a genuine Beekeeper! Upon arrival we all got talking, mainly about how everyone's Bees were settling in. Mine seem to be doing fine but a couple who attend together who got their Bees the same day as me seem to be very lucky; their Bees have almost drawn out all the foundation into full comb. I imagine mine will catch up without too much problem.

As several people were picking up their Bees and there was a lot to cover we went straight up to the apiary. This weeks course was all about Bee diseases and being able to identify them. As a lot of Bee diseases are first noticeable in the brood as a Beekeeper you need to be able to remove Bees from a frame so you can see into the cells. We split into 3 groups and was shown how to shake the Bees off a comb. Once Ivor had done a frame the hive tool was passed round so everyone had a turn. When it came to my turn I gently removed a frame and had a quick look for the Queen. While I was looking for her I noticed a Queen cup with a white residue on it; I asked Ivor what it was and while he was looking at it a large caterpillar fell of onto the hive below, Ivor quickly caught it and disposed of it. It turned out to be a greater wax moth larva! It was now time to shake the Bees; to do this you hold the frame at either side and then shake with a couple of quick sharp thrusts downwards, which should dislodge enough Bees to be able to see the brood underneath. This should be done to all brood frames at least a couple of times a year if you want to catch diseases before they become a problem. After everybody had shaken a frame we moved straight onto putting the nucleus hives into everyone's hives and then left them to collect at the end.

After a quick break we went straight onto the classroom session which this week was about Bee disease and pests. We were shown several slides with various different problems present. Things we were told to look out for were:-

• Uneven brood colour; a frame of capped brood should all have a very similar colour, newer comb will be lighter than old comb.
• Smells; strong or sour odours can be signs of foulbrood
• Uneven brood pattern; a failing Queen can cause cells to be regularly missed
• Larva in cells looking different; they should be ivory white and curled in a "C" shape, if they are a different colour or seem twisted in the cell that could be foulbrood
• Capped cells look sunken; capped brood should be lightly raised, again could be foulbrood

If any of the above are found in the hive then there could be a problem and if in doubt get someone else to look at it. If you suspect foulbrood, either American or European, then by law you need to notify DEFRA; we were all encouraged to register at Beebase and through there you can notify any problems you have. We also mentioned Varroa and Small Hive Beetle. I won't go into much detail on the diseases and pests as they will be eventually added to the separate page I've created .

I also bought a new suit for my better half so she can get a little more involved. She has decided that Bees aren't as bad as she thought but still prefers her chickens, which she blogs about here.

Steph in her Bee suit

Beekeeping Course: Week 5

This Wednesday was the first lesson back after half term. As I am working night shift this week I had a lie in on the morning, however I was woken up by such a large noise outside as the heavens opened and hail stones came down hard for 15 minutes followed by a heavy thunderstorm. Though this was impressive to watch (and amusing watching our 3 chickens running around in the rain getting wet) it also made me think there would be no apiary visit on the course this week; I was wrong! After 20 minutes of heavy rain it stopped as quickly as it started and the sun came out for the rest of the day.

When I got to the classroom we all suited up and made our way over to the apiary. We split into 3 groups and checked the hives. After having some really nice warm weather over the last 2 weeks we were hoping to see eggs laid by the new queens. Last time there were a couple of hives that had virgin queens that hadn't mated yet, they need a couple of warm days to allow them to get out of the hive to mate; the first hive opened was one of them and there were eggs present. A further inspection of that hive in a weeks time will hopefully reveal that she is laying worker eggs and not just drone eggs. If she is just laying drones (males) then the colony is doomed as it can't survive without workers (females) to collect food and look after the young. We didn't see the queen in there but as she is a new queen she wouldn't look too different from a worker as her abdomen wouldn't have got enlarged yet. We then moved onto the second hive which is an established colony and did a check of that. In this hive we got the chance to do the inspection ourselves so when it came to my turn, using the hive tool, I separated the frames of brood and carefully lifted the frames one by one. I was unable to find the queen but did find brood in all the frames I checked. While we were doing this the teacher with one of the other groups shouted over to say they had a drone laying queen. Unfortunately she will have to be killed and replaced if the colony is to survive but as she couldn't be found then it'll have to be done another time.

After a short break for tea and coffee we had a sort of test where we were given nine bits of paper with images of the 3 castes of bees (queen, worker and drone) but they were cut up separating the head, thorax and abdomen. We had to put the bits together to correctly identify the 3 castes. We finished this fairly quickly and moved onto the next part which was talking about the different castes and comparing how long each takes to develop from egg to bee; this is a link to wiki site that shows the times if interested. This is important to know as it helps with swarm control. Next weeks course includes swarm management so I won't go into that this week.

I have saved the most important part of this weeks course while last. During the apiary visit Ivor said that he does have a few nucleus hives ready for us and hopefully will be able to collect mine next Wednesday! This means I need to pull my finger out and get to my Dad's allotment during the week and prepare the site. I must admit that I am buzzing with excitement at the thought of finally being able to say I'm a Beekeeper!

Beekeeping Course: Week 3

The third week of the Beekeeping course again was split into 2 parts; the apiary visit and then back in the classroom. Before going up to the hives we were advised that we were quite lucky that the weather had picked up enough for us to do the hive inspections. Also young virgin queens will have recently hatched so the apiary visit had to be quick as if the hives were left open too long they could take flight and be lost.

On the walk up to the apiary I put my suit on and tucked my trousers into my socks (I didn't fancy Bees in my breeches). I managed to pull a large amount of hair out of my head as the Velcro on my veil got caught in my ponytail. When we got to the apiary we split into 2 groups and looked through the hives. The first hive we looked in was a polystyrene nuc hive; a nuc or nucleus hive is a small hive created from a larger hive, they usually only contain 5 or 6 frames of brood and a queen. The queen was spotted but she is still a virgin queen so was hard to spot as she has a very small abdomen compared to a laying queen. The hive was closed up very quickly so not to disrupt the build up of the hive. We then moved onto a larger more established hive, this one having a double brood area. We did a quick check to make sure there were no queen cells being created and removed a couple of queen cups; they were all empty so were just practise cups. There were plenty of brood and also quite a lot of honey in stores so no issues with the hive. We passed around a frame that the foundation was been drawn out on; this is where the Bees turn flat foundation into full comb with cells ready for eggs to be laid, or honey stored.

After the apiary visit we went back to the classroom. To begin with we had a presentation from a guy called Chris who did the same course I am doing last year. He told how he has gone from a beginner to what stage he is at now. By what Chris was saying, he has really embraced Beekeeping. He has got 6 hives now though 2 are nucs and may be used to strengthen the other hives should the need arise. One thing that interested me was that he builds his own hives from ply wood which would make it a lot cheaper, though the hives wouldn't last as long and would need to be treated against rot each year; The usual wood used is cedar as this has natural resistance to rot. I'd also need to make sure my measurements were precise so the frames fit in without getting stuck or being too loose. All in all his talk was very encouraging as this time last year he was at the same level as me.

The second half of the classroom session was Dhonn, the other guy running the course, talking about other essential pieces of equipment needed for Beekeeping. As he was talking about the various bits of equipment he handed them around the room for us all to see. Some of the items passed around were:-

• Queen cage and marking pen - This is a small round cage used to hold the queen down so you can use a marking pen to put a coloured mark on the queens thorax, making her easier to find.
• Hive tools - Already mentioned in a earlier post, these are used to prise hive components apart that have been stuck together with propolis by the Bees, also used to scrape debris and other bits from frames.
• Porter Bee escape - These are basically one way systems that you put between the brood chamber and the supers so that the Bees will leave the supers and not be able to get back in. This is done so that when you return a couple of days later there are no Bees in the supers so you can take them away to extract the honey. 
• Uncapping fork - Has two uses. The first use is to remove the capped honey so that it can be extracted. The second use is for removing drone brood to check for varroa; this kills the drone brood as the fork impales the brood, but as varroa prefer to infect drone it a useful technique for seeing how bad your mite levels are.
• Frame spacers - Simply used to make sure the correct space is kept between frames.

There were other items mentioned such as the suit and the smoker but these items weren't passed around and are very self explanatory.

Also in the past week my better half's chickens have arrived, please visit Stephs Chickens where there are pictures of the girls.

Bee Hives Spotted

Today me and my better half went on a long walk around my local area. We had to stay to decent paths as we also had our baby in the pram being pushed by us in turns. When we set off we only intended on doing a short walk but in the end we walked 3.8 miles, with quite a lot of it being up and down steep-ish hills. While on the walk we found a house down a lane with an honesty box selling eggs and honey. As we walked further down the lane we could see the man working in one corner of his land in what looked like a vegetable plot and behind him was a large area of land. The majority of the land was for chickens and ducks but there was a little area that several Bee hives could be seen. We weren't close enough to talk to the man, or see if the hives were active but if we go for a walk in that area again and see the man I will attempt to engage him in conversation and possibly visit his hives. My better half was also interested as she is going to be getting some chickens soon though she is getting fed up with me talking about Bees!

Allotment

Some time ago I did some research into acquiring an allotment and found information on http://www.landshare.net/letsgrow/ that states all I need is myself and 5 other people who pay council tax to apply together and the local council should provide allotment space. I then went on to create a group on the website and since have been patiently waiting for my group to fill up. Today I was successful in filling my group with 6 members including myself, the last 2 members where acquired rather rapidly after putting a plea on facebook. After looking at my group and list of members I got slightly annoyed as I noticed 2 members of my group have postcodes that are a long distance from me. One is in Manchester and another is in York. Upon finding this I decided these members needed contacting to see if this was just a error on the site or if they truly don't live close to me. I have sent them a pleasant email asking them to confirm if they are interested or not and hope to hear from them soon. I am going to give them a few days to get back to me before contacting the website to try to get them removed from my group, as unfortunately there is no facility to remove members from your group. I hope they respond quickly but if not a back up plan is available. As I am facebook friends with 2 interested members I can easily contact them, another member of my group seems active and lives fairly close so I will contact him through the landshare site and try to obtain his details. I do have a couple of other people who may be interested so will add their details as well and then I should have 6. Then using the template on the landshare website I will send my own letter to the council. I have no idea how long it will then take for the council to respond and then how much longer it will take for them to act upon it. Hopefully I will have a allotment area before the end of the year or next year at the latest, I certainly want one before my daughter is old enough to help. She can even have her own little corner, away from my bees, where she can plant flowers and grow what she wants (or make mud pies!).

The reasons I want to have my own allotment is so I can have somewhere close to keep my bees and grow fruit and veg. I would also consider having a couple of chickens. Also a allotment is a good outdoor social activity. I have visions of all 6 plot owners working hard in the spring and summer and then towards the end of the growing year, when it is still warm and sunlight lasts into late afternoon, clubbing together and having a outdoor feast and drink using produce from the plots. I could provide the mead from the bees and by using outdoor stoves we could cook a pot of chili with a fresh as possible side salad and baked potatoes. I would also consider building a small outdoor clay oven so we could have outdoor baked flat breads or pizzas. I will try to keep putting updates on my success or failure in this matter.