I’ll Have a Bee Please, Bob

Welcome to Miss Smith‘s 200th celebration Blog Hop

Of all the photos for the scavenger hunt it is amazing to me that the only one I could come up with for a beehive was this:

My Grandma’s old honeypot.  I haven’t seen a live beehive for years.  When I went to our local junior school there used to be a row of beehives on the grass at the side of the school, next to the Community Centre/Youth Club.  The jars of honey were sold to raise money for the school.

The beehives have gone now.  Maybe it’s because Mr Dyer who used to care for them has left, maybe it’s all the ridiculous Health and Safety rules these days.

It’s a shame, I used to like helping to look after them.  There was a group of us who went into school on Saturdays sometime to help feed them over winter – Me, Melanie, Joanne and Tishy I think it was.

We had to get well covered to make sure we didn’t get stung and we looked pretty ridiculous.  Big floppy hats covered with nets to cover our faces, which we tucked into the neck of our jumpers.  Big thick rubber gloves – again tucked in and our trouser legs tucked into thick socks.  We were going into the hives and that was going to make the bees angry.  We had smoke guns to calm the bees as much as possible.  I don’t ever remember getting stung, but it was funny when Mr Dyer did.  He ran screaming to the greenhouse and stuck his head in the water butt.  (Funny how I’d forgotten about that greenhouse until I remembered that!)

Our main job was to feed the bees over winter.  We would heat saucepans of sugar and water in pans in the school kitchen until we had a thick, sweet syrup to fill the feeders in the top of the hives to replace the honey.  The hives were square and built in tiers with wooden frames.  Each frame had a wax sheet with a honeycomb pattern embossed for the bees to build on.  They would build their cells during the summer and fill them with sweet honey, closing over the top with a wax cap.  We would pull the frames out from time to time to see how they were getting on and sometimes there were eggs or larva, which looked like little white grubs, wriggling inside.

Mel and I had our photos taken for a local paper in full bee regalia when we got our Girl Guide beekeepers badges.  I wonder whether they still do a beekeepers badge?  I bet Miss Smith would know.

And so, onto my page, using the lovely embellishment Miss Smith made and sent for me to use.  Miss Smith is a champion journaller, so the only fitting place for her embellishment is on a page with a lot of journalling:

I don’t have any photos from that time, so I wanted to use the newspaper cutting and my Guide badge certificate, but I couldn’t find them.  I settled for a photo of a bee on a flower I took this year instead.  I used my September Counterfeit kit and put the embellishment at the top of the column of journalling. I used green butterflies, lace, scalloped circles, faux stitching and stamps taken from the embellishment to pull it together.

Well blog hoppers, the next blog on your journey is Nathalie.  For those of you who didn’t hop over here from Joanne‘s blog, why not go to see Miss Smith and join the blog hop to see ALL of the lovely craftiness created from her little embellishments.

Congratulations Miss Smith – here’s to the next 200 blog posts!

P.S. Can anyone tell me the title of the kids quiz show hosted by Bob Holdness that gave me my title?  It’s bugging me that I can’t remember.

P.P.S. Don’t forget the A-Z challenge at Scrapbookers Anonymous – get busy as a bee to scrap your letter B related stash.