Bishops Stortford news by Paul Cooper

I am pleased to announce that Bishops Stortford membership has doubled this year.  A warm welcome to all new members. In fact the demand from new members for more meetings has been so strong that we have added another meeting to the programme on 3rd October at 2pm. The meeting will be held at 10 Redricks Lane, Sawbridgeworth, Herts, CM21 0RL and the topic is "Final Preparations for Winter".  See you there.

We recently had three very interesting group meetings during August and September. The first was at the apiary of Jane Moseley near Widford.  As a beginner Jane is learning fast and is already selling nucs!  After the inspection we held a "Honey Show". BSBKA's version of a honey show is a rather low-key affair where everyone sits around a long table, tastes each other's honey and then, by a form of vocal consensus, declares a winner. I think we will do this again next year.

The second meeting was as guests of Jane and Richard Ridler across the border in Essex.  They showed us some of their 18 hives at an out-apiary and then took us back to their home for fascinating talks about making soap, beeswax polish, cosmetics, propolis tincture, selling honey, etc.  It was a most interesting group meeting and we thank Jane and Richard for their hospitality.

The third meeting in September was at the home of Alan Lewis who had, rather honourably, discharged himself from hospital just to host this meeting. He gave an interesting lecture on all aspects of beekeeping (a six week course compressed into an hour!) and then proceeded to demonstrate his new "bee railway". This consists of runners linking two hives that enable him to simply slide a stack of supers to one side while he inspects the brood box. Anyone with back problems should ask Alan for a demonstration of this clever device.

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