The Joys of Spring and Soap Labels

I was going to start today's post off with a moan about the weather, how cold and grey and miserable and more like November than March it is. I went on to the Valley specially to take a photo for you of the dreary grey wet landscape but then I saw this

 and this:

 Clearly Spring is on its way, its just having to fight to get here.
The hens weren't having any of this joys of spring nonsense, they looked exactly how L would feel if I'd been forced outside today; cold, wet and fed up.

Only two of those hens are mine by the way, the other two are visitors. I'm not sure from which neighbours garden though, I thought it was the right side but they seemed as if they were about to return (visit) the left side. No matter, they all return to there coops by nightfall.
So today has been an inside day .
I turned out the new batch of Lemon and Lime soap but can't say that it is a more noticeable yellow colour than the last batch:

I think I was a bit too cautious when adding the annatto colour there. Third time lucky I hope.

The new batch of Gardener's soap came out a terrific colour though. I like it a lot and it frees up the subtle pale green colour to be used by Verbena.

 The rest of the day has been spent playing with label design. I discovered Avery do a pack of oval labels on kraft brown background which I was instantly smitten with. I have been trying different fonts and experimenting with colours and here are some of the results:

 Aren't they lovely?
The idea was that I would wrap each soap in brown kraft paper and then stick a label on the front with probably another on the back for ingredients and address and all the legal gubbins. The prototype looks like this:

But then I printed the labels off on cream business weight paper and experimented with wrapping the soap in that with no extra label. It looks better than I expected:

 I think I still like the brown label better though. Both are just experiments of course, if you are thinking that the visible creases and the jagged edge to the paper don't really cut the mustard.
More exciting news is that I have a launch date for my first sales. It will be be more in the way of a dress rehearsal than the first night, as I am sharing a stall with 3 other members of the Leeds Beekeepers Association at Thwaite Mills Industrial Museum on Easter Sunday. I don't know how much room there will be for my products but it will be quite nice to have other people there to ease me back into the routine of standing behind a stall. I'm also hoping that there will be lots of bee chat that I can pick up useful tips from.
If anyone is in the Leeds area over Easter and fancies coming down to talk soap or bees (or quail or cakes or whatever) it would be good to see you.

Pests, Diseases and a Scary Prospect to Come

Last night I went to the penultimate talk in the Leeds Beekeepers Association winter programme, which was also the first I'd made it to this season which is a shame as I do enjoy going. I certainly need all the bee knowledge I can get and I like to feel part of the beekeeping world. When two gentlemen in their early sixties sitting behind me, asked each other if their bees had been out flying during the day I wanted to turn round and say 'Mine were out too'. When one of them started listing heavy metal bands I was more intrigued. It didn't look likely  to be their music of choice, although Ozzy Osbourne, himself, is also a gentleman in his sixties. I wondered if this was the music they played to their bees.
The talk was by Dr Steven Martin formerly of the University of Sheffield, now of the University of Salford. He has been conducting some ground breaking research into the interaction between the bee parasite varroa and various bee viruses. . The varroa mite hit the beekeeping world about 20 years ago and had pretty much the same impact as HIV had on the human world, the carefree days of leaving the bees undisturbed and letting them get on with making honey were gone forever. Without monitoring and regular treatment (akin to keeping an eye out for headlice in school children) the varroa mite will multiply rapidly and the colony will dwindle rapidly until it cannot sustain itself.
Recently there has been a new threat to bees in the shape of Colony Collapse Disorder, where entire apiaries can be mysteriously wiped out without warning. This has only happened in the northern hemisphere and has been much more common in the United States although as Dr Martin dryly pointed out, as commercial beekeepers in the US can receive government compensation for Colony Collapse Disorder, any mysterious death of a colony will be blamed on CCD. In the US there is an additional stress on the bees, due to the commercial beekeepers transporting the bees thousands of miles across the country to the fruit orchards.
Dr Martin has suffered the intense hardship of having to go to Hawaii to conduct his research. Actually there is a good reason for this, in that Hawaii is made up of a group of 6 islands which until recently were varroa free, then some  years ago it was found on  Oahu, the island where most of the people live and from then it was only a matter of time until it made it to Big Island (official name Hawaii) where immense commercial apiaries are sited. Thus by acting quickly, Dr Martin and his team had a set of islands to compare, one had established varroa, one was in its first two years of varroa and the others were still varroa free. Leaving out all the details, the results of the research were that they discovered, that the presence of varroa weakened the bees sufficiently to let one virus, the Deformed Wing Virus (DWV) flourish and it is this rather than the actual varroa mites that are killing the bees.
All very interesting, however the only conclusions from the research are what we already know, that we need to keep on top of controlling varroa.
In answer to a question from the audience, Dr Martin also touched on the scary prospect of the Asian Hornet (vespa velutina nigrithorax) making it to Britain from France, where it was accidentally introduced in 2005. This is scary for our bees, as the hornets hover in front of the hive killing the bees as they return, but it is also scary for humans, as although the sting is not much worse than a bee sting, hornets can organise themselves into an attacking group. Possibly the most useful tip from the evening was, if you see a hornets nest in the woods, leave it well alone.