Tasting Season
May has been a very Tasteful month here in Warwick and Leamington.
Honey tasting at public shows is fraught with difficulty at the best of times. To avoid cross infection you have to ensure that nobody, especially children, double dips their spatula and of course there is the risk of drips from the spatula landing on little Johnny’s favourite tee-shirt as well as on the table. This, along with open honey jars, attract every wasp in the locality from June onwards – hardly encouraging to visitors to your stand.
However, we now think we’ve got it cracked.
Our first public show was at Charlecote Mill on the 8th May an ancient, working mill and well worth a visit. It was here, at our stand in this quintessential English, rural setting by the river Avon that we trialled a solution to this issue. We consigned the honey to squeezee bottles and dispensed with the spatulas in favour of wooden, re-cyclable spoons. No more cross infection risk, no more drips as the bottles incorporate a shut off valve, no more invitations to wasps for a free lunch and as only one spoon is used per customer, far more sustainable. We were even able to get heather honey to squeeze out and failed only with soft set.
Tasting was again the order of the day when twenty wannabees attended our Beekeeping Taster Day also on 8th May. This was advertised as an overview of Beekeeping, warts and all, and in order to counter the natural enthusiasm of our presenters, we introduced, somewhat tentatively, a talk on the Downside of Beekeeping. This however appears to have had little deterrent effect. We think that this may have had something to do with the apiary visit where the attendees were blown away by the experience, enhanced by witnessing the making of a split. By the end of the day, one had joined, ten expressed interest in the branch’s next years introductory course and two others in that of their own local association. Even those who decided not to take up the craft at the moment benefitted from the experience. The good thing about Taster days is that whatever the delegates decide, they can always be chalked up as a success.
Overall, a satisfactory event with the bonus of both donating the proceeds to a local charity and the presenters having great fun.
By Bernard Brown