My wife, Helen and I had a successful day selling our honey at the Downham Market Water Festival on Sunday.  Perfect weather for lots of people to venture out and some good close Dragon Boat Racing from 20 local teams.

Most who visited our stand bought some honey and it definitely helped having a jar of liquid and set honey opened to enable people to have a taste.  Surprisingly the chunk honey didn’t sell so well. I was surprised at this, as last year, the chunk honey sold best.  Again most people didn’t know what comb honey was and some were even reluctant to even try it.

We sold about 50% of our stock, so the remainder will now be sold using the sign on the road.  Hopefully the “Honesty Tin Thief” won’t be passing this time !!

 

 

Yesterday I kept the day free to extract the last honey of the season, before preparing the bees for winter. I think I have about 120 jars of honey sitting in a honey tank, which I will let settle now for 48 hours. Plus I have 3 supers with comb honey which I will cut out tomorrow. I also left a few supers in place which had some honey, but not enough to extract.

I was a bit disappointed how much was in the supers, but was expecting this, as I know honey had been disappearing. July here in Norfolk was cold, grey and wet and I think that as the bees have not been able to get out as much as they would like, they have eaten some of their honey stores. I know one super which was perfectly capped in the hive nearest the house, was now virtually empty when it came to extraction. I am not trying to make a living from this as its only a hobby, so not overly concerned. If the bees need it to survive, then so be it, it was their hard work in the first place.

I placed wet supers back on last night, which I will leave on for 3 days to allow them to clean and take the residue honey down into the brood box. Once I take cleaned supers off, I will get the Apiguard on, to treat each hive for varroa mite.

Once honey has settled I will start filling jars, some as liquid honey and others as chunk honey cut from the comb and overfilled with liquid honey. I need to get these done, then labelled up in time for the Downham Water festival on Sunday, where I have a stand to sell my honey.

 

 

 

Nothing to do with beekeeping, however whilst doing annual aerial photographic survey work yesterday, my pilot David spotted proof that aliens have arrived !!

Thought you might like to see a couple of photos I took to prove that they are here and enjoy a good pipe of tobacco whilst relaxing.

This field is below the White Horse at Mere in Wiltshire.

 

 

 

Copyright: All Images reserved David Wootton Photography www.dw-photography.co.uk