Four candles...

When I bought the two spare hives from Matlock they came with a lot of frames with old foundation in. Gradually, over the weeks, I have been clearing it out of the frames and putting it into a big tub. I decided, after taking advice at Stoneleigh, to melt it all down and get it ready to exchange for something useful.

So it was, on a dreary Sunday morning, I took out our best saucepan and filled it with a little water, put it on the gas and warmed it up. As it warmed I added some of the old comb and started to melt it down. It’s amazing how much comb can melt down into such a small amount.

Using a plastic herring tub from Lidl, an old tin that once held Cadbury Heroes and a pair of tights we managed to turn a load of dusty and spider-web-ridden comb into a selection of wax moulds. I’m quite pleased at the result and hope that subsequent melting days will be easier, quicker and, from a cleaning-up point of view, decidedly less messy.

Take a box of old comb...

Melt in your best pan until liquid...

Get the wife to donate her old tights and then burn her fingers on hot wax...

Produce a selection of odd-shaped blocks of wax for various uses later.

The only mould I have specifically for wax and which you can buy for £1 a 1oz block.

Stoneleigh and the bee show

Saturday 19 April saw the UK’s premier bee keeping event at Stoneleigh in Warwickshire. As I am new to beekeeping and mildly curious we (yes, I made Agnieszka go too) got up at 5am to make sure we were in Sale on time to get the coach. Only a dozen people went from Manchester – six didn’t turn up – which seemed a poor show, but left plenty of room for us.

The show is at the National Agricultural Centre, south of Coventry, and we arrived just after 9am. Even at that hour there were plenty of people scurrying about, armed with hive parts and tools, bee suits and wax. On entry, we handed over our tickets and got wrist bands to wear, which Agnieszka managed to stick to my arm hairs, giving me something to moan about for the rest of the morning. Inside was a warren of different rooms all chock full of bee keeping equipment: hive parts, tools, smokers, suits and associated paraphernalia. After being shoved and buffeted by tweeed-clad middle classes - who are always the rudest, despite their ‘breeding’ - we found a stall selling mead. A short while and three taster glasses later, we felt mellow enough to continue…

About the only thing I bought was a Fresnal lens to help spot the bees.
The mania that was the Thorne's offers. Talk about territorial and aggressive...

Bee suits now come in any colour you like, at £98 a pop.

And equipment to extract and process honey - this one is four grand, and it's on sale!

Outside were tents to exchange wax, melted down at home, for foundation to use in the hive for the forthcoming season.

Any mould will do, these look like they were melted into buckets.

Once the wax is melted and rolled into sheets it can then be used in the hive for the bees to re-fill with honey.
Someone making skeps in the traditional way. A relatively quiet corner, away from the hubbub of commerce and frenzied buying.

Photos, as ever, by Agnieszka - dziękuję serdecznie.