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.
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