Today was the day we decided to jar up our honey....
There are a few rules when either extracting or bottling up your honey... 
Number one:     DO IT IN A BEE PROOF ROOM!!!!!!
There are many other rules... but that seems to be the main message!
We put our honey in jars in Mrs Cottam's kitchen, on the hottest day of the year, with all the windows open... so, within 5 mins we had a few bees, after they had 'gone home' and waggle danced the location to their friends... we had LOTS of bees, all happily helping licking the honey from the outside of the bucket...! They were very placid, enjoying the sights and wonderful smells of all that honey!  So we now have lots of beautiful light Heron Hill Honey for everyone to enjoy, with plenty left for the clever bees!

As our hives were getting 'too tall' for the children (and Mrs Gorst) we had to extract some of our honey to make the hives smaller, and give the bees extra space to store the nectar they are bringing in.    It was a super harvest, from 3 supers (the honey boxes) we extracted almost 40kg of honey! We still have another 2 supers to do, but we are waiting until the children come back to school to do that lot!    Good beekeepers only take the excess honey made and stored by the bees, we will be leaving plenty on the hives to make sure they have enough to eat over the long Cumbrian winter. 

Mrs Harper, Mrs Gorst and I were invited down to the RHS Tatton flower show to speak about bees and beekeeping with children and in schools.   We had a smashing time sharing our experiences with the public and spreading the word about how amazing young people are with the bees.   We met lots of interesting people and answered many questions from people curious about our bee adventures!  It was amazing to see all the flowers, in particular those favoured by the bees!!  We need to get more Aliums in our school garden for sure!

It was our turn to host an apiary meeting with Kendal beekeepers, and so we thought it would be a great opportunity to 'officially' open our bee shed, and say thank you to all the people who have supported the bee project since we started 18 months ago.   
The Bee Teams were on hand to explain to family and friends all about the bees in our observation hive, and some of our Junior Certificate children led the inspections with members of Kendal beekeepers....
There were scones and cake a plenty, and Mrs Gorst had made the most wonderful 'bee birthday cake' to celebrate Dr Piggott's birthday, as way as a thank you for all her support.  Mr Tett, our beekeeping buddy was also there with more equipment and expert advice!  It was a wonderful afternoon celebrating all the children have achieved, thank you everyone for your support!

It is my greatest pleasure to announce that our Junior Certificate Bee Team children received their results today.... and THEY ALL PASSED!!  Radio Cumbria came to school this morning to interview the children, and they opened their envelopes on air!! 
As a school we are incredibly proud of them all, they have shown such maturity and commitment over the past year, and it has all paid off with their success today. We now have more young qualified beekeepers than any other school in the country, and the youngest too!   Well done everyone!

Most weekends Mrs Harper Mrs Gorst and I go down to the apiary to inspect the bees and plan for the children's beekeeping week ahead.  Today we were met with a huge amount of honey in our supers... so much that we couldn't fit one of the frames back into the hive!  We decided to take that frame and divide it into boxes of 'cut comb'    Cut comb consists of all the 'hexagons' of wax filled with honey, then sealed by the bees with white coloured wax discs.  The whole of these sections can be eaten, even the wax, (though I find it a bit chewy!!)   Research suggests that people with Hay fever may benefit from eating local honey comb.  We are hoping to extract our honey crop soon, the children are hopeful that this year will be award winning like last year!!

Today, Mrs Harper, Mrs Gorst and I spent the day in Lancaster University on a Bee Disease Microscopy course, learning how to assess our bees for disease and test them for Nosema and Acarine using a microscope.   It was really interesting, (though a little gruesome!) having to crush bees to make a bee 'soup' to look at under the microscope... (Mrs Harper insisted we couldn't kill any of OUR bees... so we used University bees!)  It will be great now to be able to show the children and start teaching them about bee diseases using specialised equipment.  Science in action!!  

Lucy in Year 5 compiled this amazing list of Queen Bee facts for us to share on the blog, great work Lucy!