Vintage Makery Do

The excellent Vintage Cafe (purveyors of top notch coffees and gluten free cakes) organised the Vintage Makery Do on the 24th of October at St. Ninians Church on Chanterlands Avenue. Originally built in 1643 that weekend it played host to a variety of art and craft related stalls to raise money for the Hull Animal Welfare and the Homeless. Entry was just 20p per person or a piece of food or clothing for the homeless collection.

Some folks set up the night before but I was working late and was the last to arrive. I'd brought honey, lip balm, beeswax polish, propolis tincture, beeswax, propolis salve and cold process soap. I also lugged in a super of drawn comb just remind people of the bees' contribution and to advertise that I'm a beekeeper -although I suppose it's possible the 45 kilos of honey I dragged in might've been a clue o.O

I've set the table

The event ran from 1pm to 3pm and business was very brisk so I didn't get much chance to look around the other stalls but ones I recall were a gourmet chocolatier preparing for the November launch of Koh-Koh Chocolates, and I can happily tell you he's using quality local honey, near the door was Alternatively Useful showing soy wax candles, For the Love of Kitsch was to my left with a few curios and jewellery versions of everything from newts to elephants, local shop Chance Gifts also had a stall and YoungYarn a local company with a huge Facebook following was there too.

The first person to look at the table was a young girl, I gave her a free lip balm after all it's about charity, then it got busy. Most of my sales were honey in pound jars, about two thirds of that was set honey which I'd made for the first time this year although some people still preferred liquid honey. It's quite possible that some of the honey was made from nectar collected from the gardens of the households it was going back to. After the honey sales came lip balm then soap and a bit of beeswax.

In the two hours the event was open some 400-450 people visited. Some were regulars from Vintage Cafe, others had seen the event on Facebook and quite a few told me they'ed been passing by and seen the sign outside so popped in. After totting up Vintage Cafe had raised £85 for Hull Animal Welfare and a huge 15 bags of food and clothing for the homeless.

That's no Bee BBC

Whilst browsing the web at work and catching up on the world's events a few weeks ago I was surprised to find the Taliban make money from honey sales. Yep, they keep bees just like myself, Steve Vai and Flea from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Who'd've thought it? It's mentioned in a page called Taliban expert view: Money from honey.

I'm assuming the 'expert' isn't an entemologist because the 'bee' in the photo accompanying the article definitely wasn't a bee. The huge faceted eyes are the first giveaway, too big for a worker, too small for a drone and too visibly faceted -bee eyes look shiny to us. The shape of the  back is wrong too, and it's only got two wings whilst bees have four. The first tergite looks to have some light brown marking suggesting it's a drone fly, Eristalis Tenax, which is a European member of the hoverfly family. Not only do they not make honey but I very much doubt they live in Afghanistan either.

You might make money from honey, but you won't get honey from that.

I messaged the BBC News Facebook page back on the 1st October to point it out, the message was read a couple of days later but there was no response ..so I sent a message via the BBC Complaints page. They responded eventually but seemed strangely reluctant to acknowledge they'ed posted the wrong insect:

"This photo was only included to generally illustrate this aspect of Taliban fundraising but we take your broader point and have changed it to an image which more clearly shows bees making honey."

I'm not sure how they're suggesting a photo of what was probably a European Hoverfly sunning itself illustrated fundraising through honey sales but they have now changed the image to one showing actual honey bees.

Honey Bees! They fixed it.

A more pedantic person might  point out that these bees are probably not actually making honey as they're standing on brood comb, brood comb with a fairly patchy laying pattern but I think it's close enough.