If you are young and your teeth are white and shiny – then there probably is a stone in the mix and as long as you don’t crunch it – all will be well.

However, if you are not so young and your teeth are rickety like mine – there’s probably a lump of dentistry in there. And you know what that means don’t you. Dentist is what it means. Usually.

However, for us  beekeepers there is another possible, albeit temporary solution. Read on…

Stone Age Dentistry

In times gone by, before dentists were even thought of, beeswax was often used to fill teeth. Mr.Google will tell you that the oldest examples are up 9,500 years old. Here is a picture of a beeswax filling from 6,500 years ago in Slovenia.

The owner of this tooth was a 24-30 year old man and the beeswax would have sealed his tooth protecting the exposed dentine.

Dentine, Enamel and Pulp

Dentine is the substance that sits beneath the protective enamel layer of the tooth. It contains thousands of little tubules leading to the central ‘pulp’ region of the tooth where all the nerves live. When the enamel is chipped, or cracked, or rotted away the dentine  is exposed and all those little tubules conduct messages about heat, cold, sugar, acid etc direct to the nerves in the pulp. Oh that hurts, that really really hurts.

The Mother of Invention

In the absence of a dentist – necessity becomes the mother of invention and not just for Stone Age men. Last week, a large lump of tooth turned up in my breakfast mouthful. It left what felt like huge hole with rough edges in the side of my tooth. Mercifully, there was no nerve pain but very soon the rough edges began to rasp away at the edge of my tongue. As luck would have it – it was a Sunday!

By Monday, my tongue would be in tatters, so like Stone Age man I started to think about beeswax.

Method.

If you cut a small piece of beeswax and put it into your mouth, after a while it will warm up and become malleable. At this point break a piece off about the size of the hole in your tooth, shape it into a little pellet, introduce it gently into the hole and squeeze it firmly into place until it stays put.

If it stands a bit pround – ‘close and grind’ your teeth together carefully. Bear in mind it might not work first time and you might need to take several runs at it. But after the second attempt mine stuck like glue and that’s two weeks ago now.

I know it’s a temporary measure and that very soon I will have to pick up the phone and phone the dentist but I’m ever so busy and I know what she’s going to do – she’s going grind my tooth down to a point and all being well, she’s going to make me a crown. If all is not well, she is going to do root canal work and it’s going to be horrible.

Meanwhile, in my shed is a beeswax mountain sufficient for as many as 3.5 million dental plugs and that should be enough to last me for the rest of my natural life.

So now it’s turning out to be Procrastination that’s the Mother of Invention.

Click here for beeswax facts

Click here for beeswax lipbalm recipe

Click here for beeswax handcream recipe

Click here for beeswax furniture polish recipe

Click here for beeswax soap recipe

Click here for beeswax candlemaking

Copyright © Beespoke.info 2020.  All Rights Reserved.

Éanna Ní Lamhna will give a talk on Biodiversity and the Importance of Pollinators.

There will also be a skep making demonstration – that’s me, that is.

Map here:

The dogs in the header are Murphy and Bunty.

Bunty is no longer with us. Murphy is but only just.

As you can see both of these dogs love to chase a stick and I love to throw a stick for my dogs. Or I used to.

Last week I threw a stick for my dog Murphy – the black dog. As always he went off like a bullet after it but then it went wrong. The stick bounced and it broke and Murphy ran on to it. It went down his throat, sharp end first, and sliced a  2 inch flap in the back of his throat. Fortunately it came out but there was much blood and poor Murphy howled and howled.

I was useless. I opened his mouth and groped about inside but could feel nothing and the bleeding was slowing down. Poor Murphy was all shook up and whimpering but all I could do was put my arms round him and hug him. Pathetic eh?

Anyway he quietened down and seemed almost normal but I took him to the vet anyway. I was horrified when she said she was going to keep him in and these injuries were the worst kind!

He had to have stitches in his throat, antibiotics and is still on painkillers. The vet tells me he was very lucky it wasn’t worse – sometimes a stick will go in for 12 inches! Yes 12 inches – it will just keep going till it hits something hard enough to stop it like a shoulder bone.

So – don’t throw sticks for dogs. The next time you do – it could be the last. If you are lucky it’ll only be the last stick. If not it could be the end of your dog.

Remember – even a blunt stick can break and present your dog with a sharp point to throw himself onto.

Click here for more about Bunty

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2017.  All Rights Reserved.

The four quarter days are:

• Lady day or the Feast of the Annunciation 25th March;
• Midsummer’s day around 25th June;
• Michaelmas 29th September;
• Christmas 25th December – lest we forget. Fat chance.

They all approximately coincide with either an equinox or a solstice.

Equinoxes

An equinox is when day and night are of equal duration. There are two of them – spring and autumn:

• Spring equinox 21st March;
• Autumn equinox 23rd September.

Solstices

As for the solstices there are two of these too – summer and winter.

• Summer solstice (longest day and shortest night) 21st June;
• Winter solstice (shortest day and longest night) 22nd December.

Christmas

Nobody knows the day or the month when Jesus Christ was actually born. However, the Feast of the Annunciation falls on the 25th March which is when Christians celebrate the day Gabriel called on Mary to tell her she was to be the mother of the son of God.

Imagine that!

Christmas is exactly 9 months after the Feast of the Annunciation. That’s biology for you.

Christmas also coincides approximately with the Winter Solstice on 22nd December. Also known as The Shortest Day. Now there’s cause to celebrate.

Christmas Traditions

You don’t need me to tell you about the ‘traditions’ of Christmas. Suffice to say, it is cruel that we have to bear it in the middle of the darkest, wettest and most depressing time of the year. It’s enough to push you over the edge!

We can never really know what Jesus might think about Christmas traditions, However, we do know what happened when he discovered the merchants had set up shop in the temple, so we can guess:

‘But what about the bees?’ says you…

Us beekeepers are fortunate because there is a lot of stuff out there to be getting on with at christmas.

Treat them

The bees should have been fed and treated for Varroa after the honey was extracted at the end of summer. However, midwinter is the time when the queen bees should be off lay and there should be a short broodless period which is ideal for a backup treatment with Oxalic acid. I say should be because it is not always the case especially in a mild year or where they ivy bloomed late. So long as there has been a bit of cold weather – below 15 degrees – and a decent interval since you last saw yellow ivy pollen going in to the hives – Christmas should be perfect.

Click here for how to do that.

Click here for more about Oxalic acid for Beekeepers.

I should add that midwinter treatment may not be necessary if you are confident that the conditions in autumn were good enough to allow your thymol/MAQS to work properly.

Feed them

While you are out there – check the feed status of your bees. Heft the hives to assess the weight and if they seem light put some fondant on. It won’t do any harm and if they need it later – it’s there.

If the bees seem weak and are clustering close to the top of the frames you could choose to remove the crownboard and place the fondant directly onto the bees where they will find it easily. If you do this – add an eke and pack the space around the fondant with old jumpers, sacking or some other cosy stuff.

Don’t put pollen substitute on yet – too early – wait for February.

Apiary Watch

Make sure the hive roofs are weighted down with stones or tied with ropes – winter has hardly started and there could be gales. And there could be animals.

Maintenance

Mend broken equipment. Treat spare boxes if they need it. Make up new stuff but don’t put wax into new frames till spring or it will just lose its fragrance and go all crispy then the bees won’t work it properly – they’ll draw all that abstract stuff with holes and buttresses.

All your equipment, supers, spare brood boxes etc could all do with a good scrape down – propolis flakes off well in the cold weather.  Save all the little bits of beeswax you will be amazed how it mounts up.

Click here for how to tackle your beeswax mountain.

Strip down old frames with black, knackered or holy wax. Holy wax is comb with holes in it. Burn the really black horrible wax – use if for lighting fires that’s the only thing it’s good for.

Save the paler, cleaner wax and render it:

Click here for how to render beeswax.

Then do something interesting with it but take care not to set fire to yourself:

Click here for beeswax polish recipe

Click here for beeswax lipbalm recipe

Click here for beeswax handcream recipe

Click here for candle making

Click here for soap making

Wax Moth

If you are storing used brood frames and you know you have a  wax moth problem you might like to take this opportunity to treat them with acetic acid. Acetic acid is not the stuff you put on your chips – treat it with respect.

Click here for how to do that thing

There is also a biological control agent from Vita which uses a micro-organism to attack wax moth.  The product is called Certan and the micro-organism is called Bacillus thuringiensis.

Click here for Certan information

Christmas Forage

There is very little floral forage out there for the bees at Christmas. This year there is quite a lot of gorse in bloom. In some years there may be the dregs of the ivy. Also some winter garden plants such as Mahonia or even snowdrops.

• Ivy pollen is yellow
• Gorse is orange/brown
• Snowdrops pollen is orange/brown too
• Click here for more about ivy
• Click here for how to take a crop of ivy honey.

Happy New Year!

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2017.  All Rights Reserved.

Look no further than local honey!

As long as the honey is unpasteurised – or better still raw –  it will contain a dormant population of wild yeasts from your area. The bees are well aware of them. This is why they reduce the water content of honey to below 20%  –  so that the army of wild yeasts present in the honey are unable to metabolise it. But they haven’t gone away you know – they are just dormant – waiting for the chance to burst into life.

Temperature

Before you trigger them into action – a word of warning – yeasts are very temperature sensitive:

• If you apply heat much above 30 degrees you may kill them;
• Honey from the supermarket will have been deliberately heated to temperatures designed to kill. Any yeasts that were there will be dead.

Here’s how to make a sourdough starter from honey.

Starter Recipe

This recipe is from Richard Bertinet’s excellent book ‘Crust’.

Materials

• 20g local honey – preferably raw;
• 50g spelt flour;
• 150g strong white flour – preferably organic;
• 150g luke warm water – hot water will kill your yeasts so be careful.

Method

• Mix everything together till you have a soft dough;
• Put the bowl inside a plastic bag and put it into your warming cabinet for 36-48 hours at 30 degrees;
• Leave it alone – poking or stirring doesn’t help;
• After the allotted time you should find your dough is alive and bubbly;
• You are now ready to feed your creature;
• Add to it 30g spelt flour, 280g strong white flour and 150g luke warm water and mix well;
• Leave for another 24 hours at 24 degrees;
• Take 200g of your starter and add it to 400g strong white flour and 200g water;
• Leave for 12 hours at 24 degrees;
• Now put it in the fridge for 2 days – this will slow it down;
• After 2 days you are ready to bake!

Sourdough Recipe

Materials

• 200g of your starter;
• 45g spelt flour;
• 350g strong white flour;
• 325g water;
• 10g salt.

Method

• Mix everything together till you get a sloppy dough;
• Unless you are used to working with very wet doughs watch Richard Bertinet’s method here:

• Put the dough into a floured bowl for 1 hour;
• Fold the dough and put it back into the floured bowl for another hour;
• Repeat that step;
• Form the dough into a ball and set it into a well floured proving basket or ‘banneton’ for about 16 hours;
• Turn out onto a hot baking sheet, slash and bake for 30 minutes at 220 degrees or equivalent;
• You may have noticed that this seems to be a pretty wasteful process but it need not be – bake any surplus starter for your dog.

This bread makes the best toast in the world – sublime smothered in honey of course.

Click here for Richard Bertinet’s website

Click here for more beespoke honey recipes

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2016.  All Rights Reserved.

Manx Horse Power

Personally I was charmed and delighted by these lovely Clydesdales trotting along the promenade on hairy great feet with their ears all pricked and eager. In fact I was so charmed and delighted by them I looked them up on the Blithering Internet when I got home and was incredulous to discover that the Powers-That-Be in Douglas are planning to scrap them!

Click the photo above for a close up, look at that lovely, lovely horse and ask yourself how on earth can that be?

Antique

After 140 years of service up and down the 1.5 mile long Douglas promenade linking the two antique railways, one steam and one electric, which terminate at opposite ends of the bay – six ‘surplus’ tram cars have been auctioned for a total of £10,000 and the purpose built stables have been sold for ‘development’.  Exclamation mark!

I don’t know about you but I’d travel a long way to see working horses but I can see ‘Development’ anywhere and everywhere. Don’t tell me it’s progress lads. Progress is when change leads to improvement or betterment otherwise it’s just change for the sake of it and that is stupid.

Unique

For a small island in the middle of the Irish sea, relying strongly on the tourist trade I’d say this is just the type of thing to cherish and promote. Because it’s unique and it’s different and because the Isle of Man doesn’t get enough sunshine to compete with Capri or Maderira etc and lovely as it is, the scenery does not compare to the dramatic beauty of the Hebrides, the Aran Islands or even the Isle of Arran.

Nutshell

My sharp-as-she-ever-was 83 year old mother put it in a nutshell for me when I was talking to her this morning on the phone and said I had been to the Isle of Man. Before I could say anything else she said, “Have they still got those horse drawn trams?” She has been to the Isle of Man but so long ago she can’t remember when she went, how she got there, who she went with or what they did when they got there. In fact she can’t remember anything else at all about it except the horses.

So at the next Council meeting in Douglas – when the horses come up for execution again – remember that or the day may come when nobody remembers the Isle of Man at all!

Reprieve?

I should add that there has been stay of execution and  the horse trams are to continue for another two years – that’s to 2018 but what happens then is blowing in the wind.

Click here to become a Friend of the Douglas Bay Horse Tramway

For more on the Horse Trams:

Friends of Douglas Bay Horse Trams:

Website: www.friendsofdbht.org/horses 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/friendsofdbht/

Isle of Man Government Information:

https://www.gov.im/

Isle of Man Old Horses Retirement Home 

One day either November 19 or 20th, 2016 to learn the techniques and make a small demonstration piece.

or

Both days to make a full size skep.

Tools and materials supplied.

Use the contact form below for further information.

by Dorothy Parker