Guest post – Roger Putman
Picture credits – Phil Corlett
2019 has been a good year for the bees and they seem to like their new surroundings up at the Marown old school, where it is nice to be able to have a proper sit-down and a cup of tea after our Saturday afternoon beekeeping sessions.
18 stuffed supers were removed during the first week in August and delivered to the domestic science lab at the Buchan School courtesy of Alan MacNair who runs the popular Bee Club down there.
Nine members met to help with the extraction on August 9th with the windows firmly closed which made for hot work on a sunny day. The gang was kitted out with varying exotic headgear as this was a food production line after all. John Roberts is to be commended for a particularly fine shower cap which he had bought specially for the occasion!
We were able to make use of the school’s nine frame electric extractor and our own three frame manual which proved to be a little more troublesome as Phil Corlett’s aching shoulder testifies!
We tried uncapping using a hot air gun but our ace uncappers Bronnie and John Ward thought it saved little time and might be producing little hard bits of wax which are difficult to filter out. Anyway, without cappings, I would have no drainings to make mead – 15 litres is now maturing in my dungeon as I write this. The wax went to Bronnie and Debbie Carcas’s eco friendly waxed cloth operation. Nothing was wasted.
We have around 400 jars of honey to sell at the forthcoming food fair at the Villa in September.
