37.6% of statistics are rubbish

The National Honey Week.
I didn't know this was on until Sue showed me an advert in the Grauniad with an unfunny and stupid cartoon.
Its sponsored by the British Beekeepers Association and I went to their site to see what sort of things were going on during the week.
Very little it would seem other than the National Honey Show at Sandown racecourse on the 26th-28th where the many varieties of honey and honey products are judged.
I suppose any pursuit will have advocates with a competitive edge but I'm afraid I don't really understand this. I know someone who used to be on the circuit and told me about the weird things people do to show their honey like having special spoons to remove air bubbles from the corners of jars, otherwise the honey doesn't stand a chance.

The other thing that happens is the BBKA announce figures for their members' honey production and they came out today and HONEY PRODUCTION IS DOWN!!!!! AGAIN!!!!!
Not only this but much is made in the media of the fact that 62%  of bee keepers 'are worried about 'the use of pesticides including neonicotinoids'
This gave the press the chance to dust of their stock of standard headlines and the Grauniad presented us with this

The 'decline' is  from 12.8kg per hive to ........11.80 kg. 1kg less.
Is this significant? Honey production is obviously variable and the Secretary of the county association said his honey production had been affected by hot dry weather early in the season reducing nectar production and then rain later in the season reducing the bees ability to forage.
Is this reduction indicative of the continued decline in bees and can it be linked to neonicintinoids?
Lets not forget this is a survey of what I would call 'retail' honey i.e the honey extracted for sale and ignores the honey the bees make for themselves. We're obviously not too bothered about this type of honey rather than the possibility of having to endure the nightmare of eating waffles without honey on them.
It's quite reasonable to have a situation where the bees have produced plenty of 'bee' honey that will get them through the winter but not produce a big excess for us to pour over our porridge. Year before last was a 'poor' year for my 'retail' honey yet all the colonies survived.
I had some hives that I deliberately didn't take any honey from and was happy for them to build up their stores and next year I will have at least one hive where I have no intention of taking honey from.
At this point I will again refer to the legendary and still incomplete blog I intent to do titled 'Bee keeping without honey'.

Also I'm not sure this is a representative survey of honey production anyway. The BBKA is essentially an organisation representing amateur bee keepers of which there are a lot in the UK. However the real volume honey is produced by professional beekeepers who belong to the Bee Farmer's Association. You have to have at least 40 colonies to belong to the BFA who as far as I know do not publish annual statistics.

The 62% of beekeepers who are worried about neonicintinoids in itself produces another statistic that 62% of bee keepers are probably stupid as neonicintinoids have been banned in the UK for nearly three years.This doesn't stop Grauniad readers from getting their lattes in a froth as they rage about pesticides and we are treated to the old favourite 'if the bees die, we die'.

'How was my honey production?' I hear you ask. I'm not too sure but OK I think
I don't keep records of what the bees produce although this year I had decided to do as few markets as possible and not get in the position of doing markets but running out of honey.
So I roughly worked out how much I might need for a year and it looks like I got enough to do them.
I did weigh the buckets but unfortunately lost the bit of paper the numbers were written on.
If I have more than enough to get me to the first extraction of next season in May then the surplus will sit in the garage.
If I run out, no big deal.

Swarms are not dangerous

I recently gave a talk on bees to the Arlesey WI which was great fun. Before the talk I spoke to a couple of people who were both scared/terrified of swarms. Brainless headlines in the press like this don't help.

Swarms are a bit of a pet subject with me, mostly because the press coverage they get is usually the exact opposite of the truth and leads to people being unnecessarily afraid of bees.
I mentioned that this year I had handled a small swarm without suite, gloves etc - EEEEK! they said.

Hopefully my talk reduced their fears but I came across this rather nice video about a swarm that shows:-
 - they aren't 'Killer Bees'
 - you don't need to 'barricade' your house
 - they are not 'deadly'
- they aren't 'beasts'

Its a substantial size but dealt with by someone who didn't need to be suited up like an astronaut and clearly isn't in fear of his life.
All he needed was to spray some water to stop the bees flying for a while while he sorted things out.

Propolis - a follow up

When I was first mucking about with propolis a fellow bee keeper told me he had come across propolis toothpaste. We both thought it a bit odd as propolis stains things brown.
Today on a bee keeping forum thread about propolis it appears that such a thing exists, albeit in Singapore.

Out of curiosity I Googled 'propolis toothpaste' and perhaps predictably found Holland Barrett sell the 'great tasting' toothpaste here.

Comvita are a New Zealand company who sponsored the initial research into Manuka honey so I wouldn't  be surprised if one day they sold Manuka toothpaste which will cost £50 a tube.
The 'About Us' section on their website is nearly as deranged and stuffed full of New Age hippy nonsense as the Egyptian Magic site.

So another use for propolis but before you ask, no I won't make it.

Propolis - What is it, how do I make it and what does it do?

A long time ago in a farmer's market far, far away I was asked if I had any propolis tincture.
I suspect like a lot of bee keepers all I knew about propolis was that it was, to use a technical bee keeper's phrase, 'a pain in the a.....e'
I said I would have a go but the following week the market closed and I never saw her again.
Over the coming months I was occasionally asked about it and it was noticeable the people who asked me about it were often Eastern European where using propolis as a medicinal product is very common.
Eventually I decided to have a go and thanks to Google and some trial and error came up with a method to make it.

Propolis is a sticky substance made by honey bees by mixing saliva with bees wax and tree sap, particular from Poplars and conifers.

They use it  for a variety of purposes. They use it to seal up small gaps or cracks [they fill up bigger gaps with wax comb] and also to prevent disease and keep the hive clean. They cover the walls of the hive with it and I have often read it makes a hive 'the most sterile environment in nature'.

Honey bees are so fastidious about keeping the hive clean, the photo below is of a mouse that got into a hive and was killed by the bees. As the bees couldn't get it out of the hive and the mouse would have decomposed and spread bugs and disease.  the bees mummified  it in propolis to keep things clean.

Some hives produce a lot, others don't and if a hive is untouched for a time the build up of propolis means getting it apart is very difficult. Last year I was given two hives that hadn't been looked at for a long time. The supers were so stuck down, one of them broke as I tried to get it off.

To get off its scraped with a hive tool. Any I take off will be replaced so I don't take every bit off a hive, just a little from each one that produces a lot. I now have a store which will last ages.

Apart from the propolis the main ingredient of the tincture is alcohol. Propolis is very insoluble and the only way to make a tincture is to soak it in very high strength alcohol. You can't get it from a chemist [I tried!] and I finished up buying 90% alcohol from Germany.
I was once asked by someone, who was Polish, how I made it. She said had I tried Spirytus? I hadn't heard of it but it's Polish vodka which is 96% proof. You can buy it over the internet!

I am doing a video on how its made.

If you Google  propolis there is tons of stuff about its medical properties. However I don't have any medical background and there were different permutations of how to make it and at what strength. so was a bit reluctant to push it at markets.
However I met someone [who was French] at a market who asked about it. It turned out she, and all her family, use it all the time and didn't know why it isn't more widespread here. We had a long conversation about it and when she told me she was a qualified nurse I asked her if she would be a 'test pilot' for my propolis.
I saw her a couple of months later and she said my stuff was fine and her daughter used it instead of the commercial stuff. To prove it worked when I met her she was in a wheelchair as she had broken her leg. However she was using crutches that gripped at the wrists and elbows and produced red sores. She used the propolis on one arm and not the other and on the treated one the sores cleared up.
This, combined with the fact she was a qualified nurse, gave me the confidence in it to formally sell it at markets.

As its a liquid it can be a little difficult to apply, and it can stain, so I wondered about making a cream. I have often been asked if I could make a honey lip balm.
The problem with this is that to sell something that is a cosmetic is expensive and time consuming to get it licenced, so I carried on having some available if anybody asked about it and gave most of it away.
After a while people came back for more, and several of the other stall holders at the markets I did used it. I have done some Dog Shows and a couple of people have even used it on their dogs paws if they become dry and cracked. So I decided to give it a go.
Not the greatest experience I have had although to be honest not quite as bad as I expected and after some occasionally weird correspondence and £200 later, it was duly licenced.

The benefits of propolis are two fold. It is anti bacterial, anti viral and anti fungal and is considered beneficial for skin ailments and gum sores.
Propolis is also a source of bioflavinoid compounds that enhance the therapeutic properties of Vitamin C and are also present in vegetables and fruit that contribute to the 5 A Day requirements.
I have met several people that add 5 drops of tincture to warm water with a bit of honey as a daily tonic.

Propolis has been used as a medicine for centuries and I was approached by someone asking if I could supply it.
Julian and Valerie  are the Two Apothecaries and are part of the Reenactment Movement as medieval apothecaries and demonstrate medicines made from plants and natural resources. A picture of the propolis  is here.
They were at the St George's Day Festival and if they are there next year you really should go along and say hello and talk to them about the various medicines they have on display..

.I have produced a couple of leaflets I give out at markets that can be downloaded from here.

The tincture and cream are now available at your local North Bedfordshire Honey Mega-store or at the Bromham Mill or Potton markets.
If you are interested in it please contact me via my website - northbedfordshirehoney.com - I don't check the Facebook page.