Still significant mite drop after OA

[jenkinsbrynmair]

What are your thoughts on dusting colonies regularly with icing sugar to try and keep varroa numbers down?

I don’t vape. I’ve only used apiguard (and api-bioxal trickling at new year). I know it’s impossible to get through the beekeeping year without some sort of chemical use.

But might regular icing sugar dusting throughout the season help to reduce the need for chemical treatments?

keep it for your mince pies

 

[Erichalfbee]

keep it for your mince pies

Christmas? Did you say Christmas?

 

[JamezF]

Christmas? Did you say Christmas?

Can't be. I'm sure we had one only last year.

James

 

[Sutty]

Christmas? Did you say Christmas?

Noooooo!!

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Christmas? Did you say Christmas?

my grandmother used to make me mince pies throughout the year. She didn't follow the myth about cross buns either (she never allowed us to eat them hot in case we got stomach ache

 

[Erichalfbee]

Sensible lady ....

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

it was only last week someone I knew but don't see very often bumped into me, we got chatting and all of a sudden he starts waxing lyrical about the cream horns, sweet buns and mince pies she used to make for the church Bazaars - she's been dead sixteen years, was the last person to be buried from there, the church was deconsecrated and sold off not long after, to be developed into a private home

 

[JamezF]

my grandmother used to make me mince pies throughout the year.

Good for her. It does my noodle in, how many people seem to think you can only have mince pies at Christmas, or hot cross buns (and simnel cake) at Easter, or pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. If you enjoy some particular food then there's no good reason why you should only have it for a few days each year. I noticed some mince pies in the freezer the other day. I shall be liberating them if I feel a bit peckish over the next week or so.

People get themselves so tied up in these bizarre artificial social constructs. Breakfast suffers from the same sort of behaviour. So many people seem to believe that only certain things are acceptable for the first meal of the day. We quite often have cake or left-over fruit crumble or something similar and get weird looks if we mention it to anyone, as if something made in a factory is clearly more desirable than home-cooked food made with as many ingredients that can be picked from your own garden as possible. Utter madness.

James

 

[Erichalfbee]

how many people seem to think you can only have mince pies at Christmas

I was joking, you know. Shops here have the Christmas sections open, though

Breakfast suffers from the same sort of behaviour. So many people seem to believe that only certain things are acceptable for the first meal of the day.

Ah yes....I remember the Pizza and curry days

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

People get themselves so tied up in these bizarre artificial social constructs. Breakfast suffers from the same sort of behaviour

Apple tart was a favourite breakfast for me in my younger days - I still enjoy a beans on toast breakfast, best place for beans - never with your bacon and eggs - just ruins a good meal, which reminds me, we never had bacon and eggs for breakfast, usually a lunchtime meal with maybe some boiled potatoes and sometimes laverbread, with my mother it was an evening meal with chips. Sausages were a separate meal.
As for Easter and cross buns, I was listening to a food historian exploring the myth a few years ago, the 'hot' bit was just a reference to the mediaeval system of street vendors coming out of the bakery shouting out their wares and of course, the buns would have been hot! the 'cross'has nothing to do with the crucifiction, or even Christianity. Bakers woud use a sharp knife and slash a cross in the top of the loaf/bun before baking (and the way my grandmother made cross buns to the end) so that when baked it was easy to tear into four for eating (the original 'tear and share') The connection to Easter is fairly simple as well - the type of buns we are talking of came about after the discovery of Carribean sugar, also the rise in the spice trade, the buns were spice and sweetened, were expensive and seen as a decadent luxury meal, so a law was passed that the buns should only be sold before high days and Holy days (any holiday) thus the connection to the luxury bun and Easter.

 

[Ian123]

my grandmother used to make me mince pies throughout the year. She didn't follow the myth about cross buns either (she never allowed us to eat them hot in case we got stomach ache

My mother died at the beginning of the first covid lockdown, the other day whilst clearing the freezer at home I found a box of her proper!! mince pies…….I really can’t bring myself to chuck them out!

 

[Hachi]

Sensible lady ....

Torture more like

 

[blackcloud]

Many years ago I worked night shifts and my parents found in incomprehensible that we had a full roast dinner at 3am Monday morning
Actually, that was the "Sunday" roast!
Why only a Sunday.

 

[JamezF]

Why only a Sunday.

Because Fridays is fish?

James

 

[Erichalfbee]

Because Fridays is fish?

James

Only if you are Catholic

 

[blackcloud]

Because Fridays is fish?

James

No,that was Saturday morning...

 

[blackcloud]

Only if you are Catholic

We were regarded as bloody heathans

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Thursday was fish day with us - as that's when Bob Rackley the fish man turned up in his van

 

[BernardBlack]

Only if you are Catholic

You might get the odd older person still adhering to no meat on Fridays, but it’s largely forgotten now. Although it’s still tradition to eat no meat on Good Friday.

 

[Erichalfbee]

You might get the odd older person still adhering to no meat on Fridays, but it’s largely forgotten now. Although it’s still tradition to eat no meat on Good Friday.

Yes my mother was a stickler for that. I gave the whole malarkey up years ago. Though I did get my daughter baptised to get her into a good primary school.