Thank you Cow Girl - the Birmingham one was on 3rd Sept - Apparently my Highly commended for my wax was 4th out of 30 entrants. I didn’t get to go as I was working but it was quite busy. There were 14 Classes and sounds like quite a lot of entrants.
My local club show had about 23 Classes and some only had 2 entries but there were about 100+ exhibits.
Yesterdays had 31 Classes and about 200 entries
The entries that took time effort and cost me to make were the Art entry and the Educational entry - I worked out it cost me £200 plus many hours - but both are available for sale and I hope to make a bit of money back.
I will enter both of these int the National Honey Show in October - My wax, cakes and honey entries were for a bit of fun so to get 2nd for my Novice Light Honey out of 5 entries I was quite proud. Wondering if I can put award winning on my Honey Labels.
Trouble is if I win one more 1st prize I’m no longer a Novice but up against the big Boys and Girls.
I went to the National Honey Show last year - it is a really big event. and I got a chance to see the level of competition.
The Secretary for Birmingham and the Warwick shows want me to do an article for the WBKA news letter describing my entries from a Novice point of view.
I think they sense my enthusiasm - he said he was going to ask me to be a steward for yesterdays show but I was still working.
I did however convince my little man I look after to come for the prize giving, so was really surprised to have won and got a cheque - coming second to Celia Davis was inspiring as well.
Altogether this year I have 2 x 1st’s, 3 x 2nd’s a Commended and a Highly Commended - Not bad for 15mth a bee keeper
Me neither
The politics of judging at the bigger shows has to be seen to be believed but it’s good that some people like to enter as I think it keeps a lot of little associations alive. I have friends who consistently win with the same exhibit year after year. That explains why the same people get the ribands repeatedly.
I used to do flyball with the Collies that was great fun till winning dogs started to get nobbled.
I don’t think I will be doing wax again - I must have melted and remelted the wax 50 times - I can see why Celia says Tablet Wax entry’s are a pointless exercise.
Hi Dee, I know what you mean, I heard of people showing the same frame of honeycomb year after year. I’m a bit too busy with other things. Right now it’s full on with swarm control. Yesterday I noticed some hives I helped out with full frames of brood are bursting at the seams now. They need preemptive swarm control now. It’s just snow balling. That’s where I’m heading shortly, cheers
Hi Dee, there’s a bit of honey coming in, but not as much as the bees the hives are producing at the moment. Since the start of spring, which started about 5 weeks earlier than the official start, I’ve weakened out a lot of hives twice, one hive 3 times. Most times I’m removing 4 frames of brood with or without bees, other times I’ll remove 5 frames, leaving only 4 frames of brood with the youngest larvae. You go back in 2 weeks time & the 4 frames you left behind are fully sealed & hatching, plus the 5 frames of foundation will be fully drawn with young larvae.
Once we get past this swarm season, my hives will be in good shape to bring in lots of honey.
I have the bees at the lychee farm full time. They are not producing as well as the hives near me. However I’ve still weakened most of them out to prevent swarming. A couple were a bit weak, so I got them back up to strength. The beehives there belong to the farmer. I treat them like my own & keep the honey. The farmer wants a feed of honey from time to time for his daughter, but he pays me back in produce. He’s really happy with the pollination he’s getting & I’m thrilled with the passion fruits he gives me plus we get to pick some straggler lychees after they finish harvesting.
There are times when the bees at the lychee farm (I think he has a bigger % of passion fruit than lychees, but I call it a lychee farm) produce better than the bees around me & vice versa.
I wonder how you would go boiling the wax with water & then pouring it through cheesecloth. Once the wax sets on top of the water, there maybe a tiny film of dirt on the bottom of the wax that can be removed before a second melt. I’m sure you wouldn’t need to melt it 50 times.
Well done Valli, nothing like a good competition to get you thinking about how to improve your produce. Wax is by far the trickiest substance to process, for showing I only use the wax from the honey supers and only pour into moulds when the temperature drops to around 70C, this reduces much of the shrinking and cracking. For the larger moulds of wax 1-2kg if you put it an oven and allow to cool very very slowly it should be perfect.
Hi Rodd, I found that a very slow cooling time stops cracking. I put 4 towels over my mold. Purely for my own satisfaction. I don’t think the bloke I sell it to is worried about cracks in the wax. Last report I heard was he’s right out of it & also right out of foundation.
One guy I know puts his cooling wax in an esky to slow the cooling down, old towels might be the trick. I do worry that one day I am going to spill wax into the oven and that will be the last time I will be allowed any where near the kitchen. Another option might be to use a large cardboard box and a light bulb to heat it up, then turn off the bulb to allow the wax to cool slowly.
I think the old towels is the best wax to go. I have 4 old towels specifically for that job. I guess if your showing the wax, you could place it inside a cardboard box & put the towels over that. With my regular wax mold which yields normally around up to 6 kilos, it takes more than 24 hours to cool down by using 4 towels.
I was amazed the other day. Some old dirty wax scrapings that was sitting in a cardboard box melted into the cardboard in the hot sun. After removing the top layer of cardboard, I found beautiful light yellow clean wax in the flutes of the cardboard. I came to the conclusion that some sort of paper filter would be ideal to clean wax.
Yep, think you are onto something there Jeff… I use paper towels and its incredible how well these cheap supermarket wipes can clean up wax. For the dirty wax you can run it through a couple of times, I then throw them away but some guys love to use the filthy towels for BBQ starters.
You’d probably find that those dirty wax towels would be fantastic in your smoker. I recently found something else that works fantastic to get my smoker going. Some people will probably scoff at the idea, however by the time the smoker is well & truly going, any fumes are long gone. I found that strips of used masking tape works well as a fire starter. It lights readily & burns long enough to get other things going. I’m using a lot of masking tape at the moment in the process of moving nucs around.
