National Honey Show

I went to the annual National Honey Show today for the first time. It was a good event and I'd recommend it to others. There were lots of stalls selling the whole range of beekeeping kit, books, odd looking hives (are they serious!?) and bee products. An entire room was devoted to showing honey, cakes, candles, wax, frames, and so on, which had been entered into a wide range of competitions. There were also lectures going on, but sadly I was unable to squeeze into the "moving into bee farming" workshop as I had hoped. I do entertain a lingering curiosity as to whether I might be able to turn my hobby into a somewhat more commercial endeavour. Anyway, I left the show with a fine array of books, leaflets and ideas.

Speaking of which, can anyone recommend some good intermediate level beekeeping books? As a beginner I've read several, though I still find "Bees at the bottom of the garden" by far the best for giving a balance between practical detail, concise brevity and easy reading. I've now purchased Ted Hooper's "Guide to Bees and Honey", and I'll also be picking up some course reading when I'll be studying for the BBKA's "Basic Assessment" early next year .

I also picked up some other booklets: a field guide to bumblebees (since I'm fed up with people asking me questions on them and feeling dumb), a guide to garden plants valuable to bees (published by IBRA), and a handy fold-out, wipe-clean "Guide to bees of Britain" with lots of pretty pictures of the bees most commonly found on these shores.

Oh! And I nearly forgot my most exciting purchase. Twelve quid bought me a small, polystyrene "apidea" mini-hive which I hope to use for fun with a queen cell next year to generate a new colony. The one I bought is not one of the really tiny ones you might have seen in the shops, and indeed it's a little larger than the brown polystyrene one which seems popular. I'm greatly looking forward to using it, though I've no idea how at present. Roll on April and May!