Payday

A bit of early action in and around the house and garden, Kathi popping by to return the horse trailer and heating engineer came to do the annual service of our wood pellet central heating.

Then 5:00pm and MrB arrived, the time had arrived to collect the rent. So we he set about the three hives, inspecting all the combs, some being put back in, othes being cleared of bees and placed in containers either on the left or right of him. Some combs were rearranged in order. When this hocus-pocus act was finished, roofs were put back on the hives and we headed over to his place with about 15 combs. Here in his cellar, the wax covering was scratched off, the combs placed in a centrifuge and low and behold, honey flowed , in total 20kg. MrB filled a few jars so that we had something to eat tomorrow at breakfast (only 7kg or so!) and will fill the rest in to jars tomorrow when the air bubbles from the centrifuge/straining have gone. The honey is dark in colour as it is honeydew honey or as it is called here "forest honey". On Flickr there is a series of photos depicting the work and some more details.

There then followed a strange ancient German Bee Keepers Tradition when MrsB arrived with three glasses of Pimms and we made a toast to Melissius and of course to Angelique who had given us permission to drink Pimms on a work day only because I still have a British passport and celebrate UK bank holidays.

Then drove walked home armed with the bits & pieces in the Blip:
2 x 1kg pots of honey
8 x 500g jars of honey
1 x 300g jar of honey
1 x "hotel" mini jar of honey
1 x tin of MrB's deer meat sausage/pate
1 x MrsB's "Cake in a glass jar" - Zucchini and chocolate
1 x MrsB's cake - Zucchini and ?? (forgotten)

I can vouch for the honey, know who "worked" the deer meat BUT am very suspect of the cakes. I think the Bs have taken this "Learn British Quirks" too seriously and are now using British humour. They claim the cakes both contain zucchini from the giant example I gave them last week. They tasted amazingly good, even Angie (don't eat anything I don't know) was speechless. Now I just need to get the recipe and that was the last time they get one of our zucchinis.. Still think it's leg-pulling. The "Cake in a jar" is baked in the glass and then closed with a rubber seal and glass lid.

What a great result particularly as the bees didn't come until mid May, after the main dandelion season which was followed by cold and flooding, the death of the queen, splitting the hive in two, adding an offspring hive, "growing" three new queens, not to mention my constant health issues. I think MrB was very happy with the result in the circumstances. Now we have to treat the 3 hives against the varroa mites and then feed them up so that they are as fit as possible for the winter. He suggest we try 1 storey hives as the colonies are not up to full strength and may have a problem keeping a 2 storey hive warm. Lets hope we don't have a repeat of last years long, cool, dark, damp one.

Now I need to find an agent in the British Isles to market the expected 2014 bumper production and will be sending a couple of jars to Worthing and Co. Cavan as testers for the Anglo-Saxon/Celtic taste approval.

Thank you Mr&MrsB for all your help and extraordinary support in so many things, not just with the bees. The credit for all the above, is theirs.