When I began this blog I promised to write about hot beds, the birds and the bees and getting to know your onions. I want to be faithful to you, even though it will soon be time for Seedy Sunday in Brighton.
There was a real buzz about the Phoenix Centre last Friday, heaving like a hive of busy bees rising from the ashes of Christmas and swarming into the new year. BHOGG, one of my favourite community groups in Brighton, was having an evening on the top bar hive and on bare foot beekeeping, though I suspect you need more than a top bar if the bees swarm around your bare feet. There’s the sting.
Top Bar Beehive
The eloquent Vanessa Tourle gave an elegant talk on her project to set up “top bar” beehives as part of the magnificent Moulsecoomb Forest Garden project. This is a way of keeping bees with the emphasis on bee health and disease prevention. You can still harvest some honey, but it is based on the classic principles of doing no harm and ensuring sustainability. Much more on this can be found at www.bhogg.org where BHOGG have uploaded some great pictures and information on beekeeping, with data on the major risks today to bees through aggressive aggroculture, and penny pinching pesticides that are untested over time and decimating billions of bees.
Is there honey still for tea?
What I particularly liked about the talk by Vanessa, and this is typical of BHOGG, is the way it is modest, down to earth and practical. Putting organic theory into practice in an entertaining and educational way, no propaganda no PR. Yes there was a projector and there was a presentation, but fascinating questions were explored in an engaging way by a bevy of bee keepers from Brighton, who had emerged from their Christmas hibernation. The packed house of perhaps 60 people explored the beehives on display and tasted the “home made” honey, the nectar of the goddesses who are the queen bees of Bhogg.
We wanted more, no one would go, that’s the way of all good meeting.
A queen with courtiers
Well the next orgy of organic delights comes with Seedy Sunday , it is what Brighton is all about. Last year it included a bug hotel, suitable for botanists and not Brighton Conferees, but there will be many more mysteries and delights on the first Sunday in February, which will be in my blog next week. Watch this space and put 7 February now in your diary.If you want to help contact me at aphillips@gmx.net.
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