|
|
9th July, 2008 - Bee Sting The Alternative To Botox With no wind and bright sunshine Dan opened up his bee hive for inspection.
Tracey stood fifteen feet away like David Bailey on a shoot!
Whilst Tracey was recording the event on camera a bee landed on her lip and stung her.
We would just like to report in true 'Gadget Show' style the Pentax Optio 550 digital camera will still work satisfactorily after being thrown up in the air 6 metres!!!
Tracey now has a trout pout Leslie Ash would be proud of!!
Dan was not impressed by all Tracey's shouting and screaming (it hurt!) as he was worried his bees might be frightened and fly off - good to know where Dan's priorities lie!
With Tracey nursing a fat lip, Dan continued with the hive inspection.
The purpose of the inspection is to make sure that all is well within the hive and that the queen is still there - now answer truthfully, can you see her in this lot:
Bees do a huge amount of good work in the garden and the result of all their labour is that at the end of the summer, we get to harvest several jars of honey.
Obviously, the amount of honey that we can harvest depends upon the weather and the bees ability to collect nectar and pollen.
The top part of the hive is where bees store their honey and inside this section, there are 10 "frames" and each frame will hold around 2-3kg of honey.
3 weeks ago, when Dan did his last inspection, the bees had only filled one frame with honey - when his did his inspection today, they've filled 8!
This is tremendous work and it also means that we are going to have to buy an extension (called a "super") so that the bees can continue to make honey.
It also means that we should get a superb harvest of honey - well over 20 kilos!!! With each jar of quality honey costing €6 for half a kilo, we're expecting to get over 40 jars...che-ching!
On top of that, we actually got to taste some of the honey today, as the bees had started to store it in the wrong place and so it had to be removed (what a shame!!!)
Now, without being biased, it has to be said that the small amount of honey that we had today was without any shadow of a doubt, the most beautiful honey any of us had ever tasted.
It was sweet, without being sickly, it was light and not a thick mass and it was exceptionally light in colour.
It was a true bonus to be able to sample this amazing honey before the harvest at the end of the summer and we are now looking for as many honey based recipes as we can find! View The Blog Read All Bee Stories |
