The Marvellous Mustard Miracle Morph

This season has a special kind of mystical wizardry and magic about it; the alchemy of the harvest. After all, you might ask - what's mustard got to do with honey?

Well, see, let me explain. First there was the Finchley Farmers' Market. I hadn't planned to sell my honey at the market this month - I just wasn't organised enough. But on the Friday before, I got a call from the Farmers team, begging me to come and sell my local honey. Apparently the punters have been crying out for the stuff. How could I resist!?

So I committed myself to a stall, put the phone down and promptly panicked. "What've I done?! I don't have enough honey! It's all in big bottles - no time to get any little bottles! With labels and everything. Oh no! This is hopeless! What am I going to do!? GU-UU-Y, HEEEELP!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Which left Himself looking a little like a rabbit caught in the headlights. Nevertheless he stepped gamely up to the plate and went looking for little jars. No luck.

This called for a Special Emergency Plan. On Friday night Guy and I went to the Super-Large-Tesco round the corner, found a trolley and went shopping - for empty jars. Of course we didn't find any. BUT! A-HA! What we did find, folks, was 48p mustard. In the perfect jar. So we bought 'em.

Lots of 'em. Forty of 'em, to be precise.

Then we went home and emptied the mustard out of the jars and washed, cleaned and sterilised the jars. Put honey in 'em. And, by jove, we sold the lot :)

I call this the Marvellous Mustard Miracle Morph.

Although admittedly it did leave piles of mustard lying around all over every kitchen surface, looking a bit like Lakes of Poo, much to the bemusement and subsequent hilarity of fellow flatmates). We are all In the Mustard for weeks to come. We shall be having Mustard Evenings for Many a Month. Expect an invite shortly ....

The Three Stages of the Marvellous Mustard Miracle Morph:

I had also gone out to John Lewis and bought a whirlwind of display stuff. Of course, this blew the budget completely. Well, almost. Guy was fabulous; really entered into the Spirit of the Thing by doing a whole Excel spreadsheet to calculate:

• the cost of the mustard jars plus
  
• the cost of the John Lewis display stuff and
  
• the cost of the stall

against

the price per half-pound jar of honey

and after selling 38 of my entire stock of 59 jars, we made A Grand Total of £153.89 !

All in all we had heaps of fun and the picture above shows the Best Bit Of All - the moment when I introduced this little lass to her first ever taste of honey - her face was a picture to behold. Bless!

(I get by with a little help from my friends)

* * *

Last weekend I had the joy of spending time at the Enfield Steam and Country Show, which was so quintessentially British, it was a blast. In a small field in the middle of nowhere, some mad-keen car and traction engine enthusiasts decided to erect some tents,and an agricultural main arena for dog agility displays and stuff. And everyone parked their vintage cars in rows down the hillside and set up their camping tables and chairs and had tea and picnics in between the rows of cars through howling gales and blustery rain showers.

And we all had an incredibly Grand Day Out, in the great tradition of Wallace and Gromit. My friend Sarah and her dog Sparkle (nutty as a fruitcake and twice as endearing) participated in the Agility Show and in the Prettiest Bitch (stop laughing!) And they actually won some Rosettes, which says something, only I'm not quite sure what. And my friend MissP turned up looking every inch the Glamorous Gypsy Fortune Teller. Her man Rod found a pair of brand-new thigh-high stilleto black leather boots in the Car Boot Sale. So everyone was happy.

And that's about all I'm going to say about that!

* * *

But of course, more importantly, we have coming up, the competition that everyone's been waiting for: The Enfield Town Park Autumn Country Show - with the long-awaited (at least by me, anyway) Honey Competition!

I'm so excited I could POP! My entries were submitted earlier this evening, and the judging will happen in the Horticultural Tent on Saturday morning. They let the public in at 1.30 and I plan to be first in, straining at the leash, of course. Wish me luck :)

* * *

Last but not least, on a no-less manic but far more sobering note, let me not forget to tell you about the bees, ladies and gents, lest you think that in all the excitement of the Honey Harvest Season, we'd have forgotten all about them. We have not ...

Two weeks ago, I placed the autumn anti-varroa medication into the hives and gradually as September set in, the merry medicinal stench of Apiguard has permeated the apiary. On Sunday afternoon, I ventured into Itchy Knee, dying to know if they had managed to solve the problem of the Queen Replacement.

I was so sure, so sure they would solve it. These bees have been so strong; so resilient. But on going through the frames, there was nothing to see - only adult foraging bees, honey stores - and frame after frame of .... nothing. No capped brood, no fat white larvae, no tiny rice-grain eggs. No Queen.

I feel quite devastated. Time and again, I go back and ponder why I was so convinced we had to kill the Gangster Queen. Shouldn't we have waited some more, even more? Why, why, why!? Too late now! I closed up the hive (after the obligatory sting through three layers onto the arm) and went away to think.

The obvious solution seems to unite the hive with San-Shi, so that two hives become one again under a single strong Queen and thus with a stronger chance for survival through the winter. It's too late now to try and move a frame of brood across from San-Shi to Itchy Knee. There simply are not enough drones left to wait another 17 - 21 days for yet another, even fainter, chance of a new Virgin Queen, who must still then be mated before winter. Not enough time left at all.

But it's a few days later and I'm still thinking about it, and a seed that was placed in my mind this last weekend by a mentor is lurking. Perhaps they have made a Queen, and she has only just mated, and perhaps in a day or two, eggs?

After all; this was the timeline

• Day 0: 1st August - Queen killed
• Day 1 - approx 7: Time needed for bees to realise their Queen is dead
• Day 3 (approx) - 17: Time needed to utilise 3-day old egg to be transformed into a Queen
• Day 18: A new Virgin Queen hatches (but I saw no trace of a hatched QC - Queen Cell)
• Day 19 - approx 25: Virgin Queen travels on Mating Flights
• Day 26 - 31: Rice grain eggs are laid.

Perhaps, perhaps, just perhaps, I was just a day or two too early to pick up on signs of a newly-mated Queen. So, I need to inspect again on Saturday. And on the same day, I will inspect San-Shi as well, to follow up on the 2-week medical treatment and begin the next 4-week medication process. If I see no trace of Queen then, it will be time to unite the two hives. Which will be a major new experience for me. I am nervous, but intrigued to see if I can do it; how I will cope, and whether it will work in the long run.

The bees continue to attract the strangest creatures to my garden; predators, aliens, invaders, curiousities. These are Hover Flies, who are created to mimic the bees in look. They quite shook me up.

(Hover fly: Volucella zonaria)

But then, reading over this blog, it seems the bees have shaken up every aspect of my life, from mustard into honey, so that everything is magically altered and nothing is quite as it was before.