I spoke to the group before opening the hive, I asked one of the ladies to take some pics, they were either miles back or dark - it was a bright sunny day to . . Never mind, at least it gives you as idea of what it all looked like ! Interesting look don`t you think ?? - bee suit and jandles on my feet - I get really hot feet in boots ..
I am standing on this rather old pergola which I had to climb a ladder up to get to, plus it wobbled and I nearly did `freak out` as my daughter would say !I took one frame of capped honey out of one of the boxes to show the people gathered below, we didn`t get to close as no one had any protective clothing on. The bees were very well behaved, especially as they had had varroa strips put in the day before.
Last Saturday I was part of the yearly summer festival held at the beautiful Hamilton Gardens. A number of different talks were given in the sustainable gardens, including Earthtalk@Awhitu, (check out their great website) 2 women who have developed an incredible garden from a desolate piece of land out on the Awhitu peninsular, Wiremu Puke gave a guided tour of Te Parapara, the first and only authentic Maori garden built in NZ since pre-European days and is one of the Gardens highlights, one of NZ`s well known TV gardeners, Xanthe White spoke about her personal gardens, there was a `keeping hens in the city` talk, composting lessons, worms, a guided tour of our large walled vege garden, herbs for children and finally, me - on bees of course !! It was a very successful day, I had a great group of people with lots of questions and many really keen to keep bees. I have had acouple of emails and by the feed back I got, there are so many interested organically minded future beekeepers out there - even in little old NZ or `Godzone` as it has often been referred to.
This part of the 2 week festival is run by the Hamilton Permaculture group and is always very popular - they had a great band playing, with food stalls, Touchwood Books (another good NZ website), the Green Party, Enviro groups - a really interesting selection of things to look at and learn from. I look forward to it every year.
3 comments:
That sounds like quite a festival, very interesting.
You look lovely in white. The history of the garden is wonderful and I would loved to have been there. So many interesting topics.
I've been quite busy planning our bee school, which is tomorrow. After that we'll be doing a festival that is much like yours. Busy spring, but I love it. We still have lots of snow on the ground, but are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The weekend is supposed to be nice and sunny.
I enjoyed your post! I love to be around people who are curious about raising bees and ask lots of questions!
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