2015 Beverley Beekeeper's Auction

The last weekend in April was an important date in the local beekeeping calendar as it was Beverley Beekeeper's Association's annual auction. The event when beekeepers sell off old or surplus equipment and bee colonies and a couple of astute sellers make a little profit on items they've made or bought to trade, cheque books get dusted off, money changes hands and everyone goes home to break out the blowtorch and start scorching their purchases.

Some Beekeeping Stuff

As usual viewing started at 10am and the auction was scheduled to start at 12:00. As on previous occasions I'd planned to roll up bright and early peruse the wares and make a plan based on what I needed and what was there. I needed mostly hive floors,  hive lids, queen excluders, a couple of supers and some Commercial brood boxes. Unfortunately the previous night I wound up at impromptu gathering till the early morning and my phone battery died. I woke up at half eleven, responded to a handful of FB messages from the previous night before plugging my dead phone into a contraption with a couple of AA batteries to give it some charge, grabbing my chequebook and  heading out.

I arrived as they reached lot number 15 so I'd not missed much. Lot 15 was some plastic tubs if you were wondering. On display in the hall was beekeeping kit ranging from plastic buckets to new and old hive parts and stands to shiny powered honey extractors and, just outside, bees. There were a lot of feeders for sale, wooden and plastic, not long after sitting down someone bagged a rather smart Ashforth feeder for £8. There were a handful of extractors on offer including some powered models, someone won a mini extractor for £65.

Shiny Powered Honey Extractor

I bid on a couple of hive roofs winning neither then got a rather ragged roof for £18. I've since given it a lick of paint and now it looks well OK it looks like a slightly tatty roof with a lick of paint, but looks aside it's actually a very sturdy piece of construction -certainly weighs more than any of my other roofs. A few supers complete with frames and foundation came up and I got possibly the third one for £26. Another bargain, it looks to be new. This season's looking pretty good so far so it'll be pressed into service pretty soon. Among the bits, bobs and creations on sale was a huge knife with handles at either end. The kind of thing you'd probably spot in the background of a Hostel movie. When it came up the auctioneer revealed it to be a Fondant Knife, for cutting the huge catering size blocks of cake icing beekeepers use in winter. I think the knife sold although the boxes of Fondant that came up later went unsold.

Leather gauntlets, huge knife, branding iron

There were some lots of unframed Queen Excluders and I got a set of three for £25. In theory an unframed excluder can go straight onto the Brood Box and the Super can go on top of that, although when I tested one there was a gap between the Super and the Brood Box, It's possible that I used a Super that wasn't built quite to specification but I think I'll build some frames for the excluders anyway - look out for that super exciting post later in the year! 8-D

Unframed Queen Excluders
2mm Copper wires with 4.3mm gaps between them

After a few more items there was a little break and we headed outside to see the bee colonies. I could be wrong but I think there were less colonies than last year. There was certainly less nucs with most of the colonies being in National hives.

I tried one of those arty angle shots.
Didn't get it quite right..

Last year at the York Beekeepers Auction the last two nucs of bees went for £50 each, and as we'd had a fairly easy winter I expect there'll've been less winter losses to be replaced. Based on that I was expecting bee prices to be pretty low with few people bidding on them. Unsurprisingly I was wrong about that. The first colony with a red Queen went for £180, a red marked Queen was born in 2013 so not a young bee. A national with a super went for £260, although I can't recall if the super was honey or being used for brood. There were plenty of people wanting to buy bees so the bidding was competitive. I bid on the four nucs losing out on three and eventually picking up the very last one for £180. That was for a 5 frame nuc with an unmarked 2014 Queen. I'd guess last year's low prices were probably one reason for fewer colonies being sold this year. Bet a few people were kicking themselves when they saw the prices they were fetching this year.

Nobody took the Strainaway

Back inside and before things got underway I took the opportunity to see what was coming under the hammer next. The most unusual thing I saw was a vacuum cleaner attached to two huge buckets. The top bucket had a description identifying it as a Strainaway. A system for filtering honey rapidly using a vacuum cleaner to create negative pressure in the lower vessel. Looking in the forums a few people really rate the system and they were only made for a very short time. Unfortunately it didn't meet it's reserve. There was what I think was a really well made Observation Hive which was pretty much an objet d'art in it's own right. Shame I didn't take a better photo of it really... I also spotted what looked like a polearm for a medieval child soldier, although it turned out to be a brush cutter. Lots of ratchet straps were sold, which surprised me =I get mine from the Poundshop. Someone won a Baby Burco for £8. I have one of these from a previous auction myself, surprisingly useful things.

Observation Hive

Something I'd recently looked into getting hold of was a Branding Iron. I'm setting up an out apiary and branding your woodwork is the beekeeping equivalent of Smart Water to prove ownership in the event of theft. I had tried using a cheap branding iron made for BBQ meat but it was difficult to get it hot enough for wood, the handle broke and eventually my blowtorch melted the thing anyway. I then got a quote to have one made with 4 letters but was just shy of a hundred quid. I didn't fancy parting with almost whole hours pay for a brand so decided to give it some thought, so, when I spotted a branding iron on the auction floor I decided to put a few bids in. Turned out nobody else was interested in it so I got it for three beer tokens. Whilst it has somebody else's initials on it and there was a lot of kit on sale with those initials already on it I figure I can use a hacksaw to alter it to form a custom brand.

Branding Iron.

At some point I got 6 pairs of 10 slot castellations for the princely sum of £8. They're basically a set of metal battlements that you nail inside a Super to space out the frames. They had quite a bit of propolis attached which if I'd thought about I could've frozen, knocked off, dissolved and sold to more than recoup the cost of the catellations. As it was I just bathed them in a strong sodium carbonate solution for a few days and scrubbed them instead.

10 slot Castellated Spacers

Somewhere along the way I also picked up a couple of empty supers with 9 slot castellations. There were a few things I suspected were made specifically for sale rather than being surplus to needs. These included a few lots of hive stands. Being well made and treated with something green they'ed've been good for my out apiary but they were a little pricey for me so I'll be sticking with my timbers on breeze block arrangements for a while yet. They folded flat too which would probably be handy for anyone who transports their hives for pollination services or to gather heather honey. Unfortunately they didn't meet their reserve.

A stack of triple hive stands

There were a few other random things I bid on and a couple I won. These included some old hessian to use as smoker fuel and an overall without a hood.I think it's some sort of decorators overall. I've since tried it out over my jeans and under my bee jacket, so far so good, even the black bees haven't stung me through it. Towards the end were two bizzare looking white plastic rectangles in aged plastic wallets with a couple of bits of paper. They were actually foundation embossing dies from H.T.Herring & Son, you use them to make new foundation from your own beeswax. The bits of paper are one with a plan for making a pouring tray to make rectangles of foundation and one with instructions on how to use the dies to emboss them. Making your own foundation looks interesting (to me anyway) and over time should save me a bit of money too. There wasn't actually much bidding interest in these, I got the second set for a fiver.

Ancient Embossing Dies

I'm not sure how old they are but I'd go as far as to say "very." One of the bits of paper states "Price 10p" which probably gives some indication of age. The instructions talk about using a mangle or wringer too which tells me they're seriously old. I'll have to get hold of a working mangle to use these at some point, there's actually plenty of them on eBay at the moment so that shouldn't be a problem.

Like last year there were a few buckets of honey for sale. Unfortunately the lid on the one being shown wasn't on as firmly as you'd hope so when it was being shown there was some spillage on the floor and the chap holding it. There was a bit of bidding on the first bucket and the chap who won it then stood on and took the rest too. There was quite a lot of buckets so it was a hefty investment, to me anyway, but once decanted into jars and sold off it should net an impressive profit.

Something I noticed this year compared to previous years was a lack in variety of the hive types on sale. There was only one WBC hive, which was listed as ornamental, whereas previously there's usually been a few of these dotted about, there were no Commercial boxes at all and no polystyrene hives. Perhaps the absence of other hive types is a reflection that more beekeepers standardising on the National, it's meant to have been a standard since 1960 really.

At the end I queued up, wrote my first cheque this year, loaded my stuff into the car and headed home to scorch a couple of used supers and the roof. Later in the evening when it was cooler I drove back to pick up the bees. They'ed stopped flying by then so I pushed a bit of sponge the seller supplied into the entrance and secured it with some masking tape -probably not necessary but better safe than stuck in a car full of bees. I also popped a ratchet strap around the whole thing to hold the roof in place -although I later found the crownboard had been secured with packing tape anyway.

Ready to go

After a slow drive I put the nuc in the location of the bees' new home before moving them into a fullsized hive three days later, That's another auction done and dusted.

New Bees