Wet supers

[Lolly Bee]

Our association has a collective arrangement when taking bees to the heather so we only pay for the number of hives a member takes to the heather The problem is that the crop is totally unpredictable - 2024 was a good year but there have been years (such as 2018) where the heather produced nothing and some colonies actually starved. It's a short lived crop and you need big colonies to take advantage of it, usually people combine to have double brood or very full brood boxes. Then there's the hassle of getting them there, bringing them back and processing heather honey - cut comb seems popular but you will need a press if you are going to extract it as it's thixotropic. With only three hives I rather doubt that the effort required is worth the reward and the risk ... I've never bothered.

I totally get that and was going to refuse. However in a slice of good news some good friends of our live in the New Forest and have said they's love to have my hives in their garden. FOC except for the free honey that I'm going to insist on giving them. So it guess if the heather is rubbish I don't have to take the hives there. Now all I have to do is keep my digits crossed!

 

[Erichalfbee]

However in a slice of good news some good friends of our live in the New Forest and have said they's love to have my hives in their garden.

That’s a win, then. Go for it. My bees are nowhere near heather but I’ve had the odd bucket of heather mix from JBM. The bees mix other nectar in though you still have to extract it like Heather. It soft sets itself and is lovely.
Which reminds me that I have a half bucket with my name on it in his honey store.

 

[Lolly Bee]

That’s a win, then. Go for it. My bees are nowhere near heather but I’ve had the odd bucket of heather mix from JBM. The bees mix other nectar in though you still have to extract it like Heather. It soft sets itself and is lovely.
Which reminds me that I have a half bucket with my name on it in his honey store.

Sounds like I might need a lesson in heather honey extraction then. Erichalfbee you might be chief teacher! ; )

 

[Erichalfbee]

Sounds like I might need a lesson in heather honey extraction then. Erichalfbee you might be chief teacher! ; )

Oh no not me. I just buy the stuff.
Ask @jenkinsbrynmair or @ericbeaumont

 

[ericbeaumont]

heather honey extraction

Depends if your location has bell (flowers earlier) or ling. I get 99% bell in West Surrey and I leave the occasional half-frame of ling for bees to clear out in spring. If I had a lot of ling I'd put on cut comb boxes.

 

[ericbeaumont]

guess if the heather is rubbish I don't have to take the hives there

Watch the weather in the four months prior to July/August; if it's dry, heather won't produce.

 

[JamezF]

Watch the weather in the four months prior to July/August; if it's dry, heather won't produce.

Seems pretty unlikely to me that it would be dry for four days prior to July/August...

James

 

[mbc]

Every pig, every hovel to control and tax, I have had a good look at the Verderers website, it seems to have evolved. The descendants of those Normans will never cede their control of our lands, they are just more covert in their ways.

I read somewhere that 70% of the land in England is still owned by direct descendants of those bold adventurers who came over with William the conqueror, they know how to hang on to things!

 

[rolande]

I read somewhere that 70% of the land in England is still owned by direct descendants of those bold adventurers who came over with William the conqueror, they know how to hang on to things!

There's an old saying that if you took all the money in the world and divided it equally amongst all the people it wouldn't be long before it all ended up back where it came from.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I read somewhere that 70% of the land in England is still owned by direct descendants of those bold adventurers who came over with William the conqueror, they know how to hang on to things!

parasites do have that knack of hanging on regardless.

 

[Sutty]

I read somewhere that 70% of the land in England is still owned by direct descendants of those bold adventurers who came over with William the conqueror, they know how to hang on to things!

That's roughly 45 generations, if everyone had 2 surviving children That's an awful lot of people, so it's a very unsurprising statistic, and the same probably applies to the people around before the Norman invasion, and several other groups.

 

[ericbeaumont]

direct descendants of those bold adventurers who came over with William the conqueror

I'm one of them, but the riches have passed me by.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

bloody immigrants - my ancestors were here to wave the Romans goodbye when the scarpered

 

[Penninetrader]

bloody immigrants - my ancestors were here to wave the Romans goodbye when the scarpered

The problem Mr. J is that the Normans as an occupying force never left, their law of property above that of man is the law of England and Wales but not that of Scotland, Scottish law is that of the person. We are still ruled and owned by those invaders and that is a fact, their system has been copied throughout the world of how to divide and rule. The real Conservatives used exactly the same system. There were many, that you would term English, who took flight away from the Romans to live in Wales. In my area many are now taking flight to the hills away from their generational homes.
It is notable that once The Romans left, the Celts. of which the majority of the UK population are, wholesale destroyed any memory of their existence so hated were they.
How we were educated in school totally disregarded the reality of how brutal and evil were the invaders towards the native population. They were worse than the Nazis and should be spoken of in those terms.
Great works of art, buildings and education do not exonerate.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

heir law of property above that of man is the law of England and Wales

only England until fat Hal got his grubby little mitts on our laws - pretend Tewdurs, similar to the saxe-coburg cabal