Slow Food apiary visit
Like
bees round a honeypot, a party from Edinburgh Slow Food clustered round a
beehive
last weekend and learned how bees turn nectar
into honey. Slow Food is an international
movement which “aims to protect the pleasures
of the table from the homogenisation of
modern
fast food and life” (http://www.slowfood.com).
At
the apiary of the East Lothian Beekeepers Association the visitors donned
veils, gloves
and overalls and watched as the Association President,
George Barton, expertly removed
frames of comb from the hives. Some combs
contained eggs, larvae and pupae: the brood frames.
Other frames glistened with freshly collected
nectar, dazzled with differently coloured pollens,
or
tempted the eyes with delicious honeycomb. Some hives contained queen cells in
which new
queen
bees were developing, a sign of imminent swarming. The visitors were lucky
enough to
see
a football sized swarm collected from a small tree and poured rather
undignifiedly into its
new
hive. After half an hour all the stragglers had rejoined the swarm and a new
colony had begun
life (and work). Showers of rain sent everyone
inside for tea and honeycake, and to taste heather,
dandelion and sweet chestnut honeys as well as
honeycomb taken straight from the hive.
The
second half of the visit was to Ormiston Honey Farm where George Hood described
how honey
is extracted on a commercial scale through a
process of gentle warming, spinning and settling.
After
a final step of straining to remove any fragments of beeswax or bees legs from
the honey it
is
stored and bottled. Although George Hood gives a “Best before date” of eighteen
months after
bottling,
he was confident that his honey was stable for many years. A Slow Food member
recounted
how an archaeological find of jars from
ancient
Thanks
to all who helped out and especially George for providing the site and
refreshments
Click
here to see some of the pictures courtesy
of Pat