Up in smoke
Well, the honey show has been and gone and once again I haven’t won a prize. I know I would stand a better chance if I actually entered something, but I have other issues as well: it’s perfection that I have a problem with.
Not long back a beekeeping friend who I taught a few years ago, was in our local deli, she spotted one of my jars of honey with a slightly wonky label; so, whilst the shopkeeper's back was turned, she carefully peeled back the label and put it on straight. Of course she told me, in that tut-tut voice. I explained that a label slightly askance gives the desired impression of being produced in a cottage industry.
I know of only two places where you will find jars of honey with perfect labels.
Jars gleaming, honey filtered, pollen removed, gleaming lucid, perfect: the first place is the honey show of course, the other is in a supermarket with a jar of Chinese honey. Now if I wanted to buy a good jar of honey, I would look for the jar with the handwritten label, honey slightly misty looking and maybe a fleck or two of wax on the top. That’s what my wife gets anyway.
Many years ago in Ireland, the weather had been bad, even for that country. Three outstanding members of the local beekeeping community had no honey to exhibit, so they decided to try an experiment: they bought some Chinese honey, decanted it into their own jars, labelled it, and entered it into the honey show. Of course, they were not expecting to win - except that one of them came second, another third, and the last entrant was unplaced, possibly because the label was not straight enough.
I was told this in confidence, but it was thirty years ago and the three of them will have moved on to heaven’s pastures.
This month is also the time when I do all those cleaning up jobs ready for a new season. The bee suits go in the wash (45 minutes with Vanish Oxi Action). Of course, if you are a new beekeeper and want to look like an old hand, leave the suit hung up in the shed over winter so that it can develop those lovely mould patches redolent of a well-worn master beekeeper’s suit.
Whilst at it, it's a good idea to check the suits for leaks. Veils seem to deteriorate and become brittle long before the rest of the suit. I had one hole on my trousers where I had lent the hot smoker against them. My spare suit already had a new veil, as my grandson discovered a hole in it as he was helping me one day. Oops.
Another job that I have just done is de coke all my smokers.
I have four of these for three reasons:
- So that I have a spare when I leave one sitting behind on a hive at the last apiary I visited.
- So that there is a spare when the first one gets clogged up with tar.
- I can’t resist buying a nice shiny smoker at a honey show.
Rejuvenating them is easy: a big blow lamp will burn up all the tar until it’s flaking off and easy to clean with a wire brush. The last job on the smoker - and this is my top tip - is to rub around the rim where the top goes on with high-temperature grease, this solves the problem of the top becoming irrevocably welded on in use with tar.
I wonder whether I can just buy some new trousers?
