OBKA Out and About 2021

U3A Woodstock Social Afternoon July 2021

Andy Pedley, OBKA's Apiary Manager, took along an observation hive to the above event - always a source of fascination and interest.

OBKA at Science Oxford's Family Bee Day - 07 August 2021

Richard Stansfield, the OBKA Secretary, keeps a hive at the Science Oxford site in Headington.

Working with the Science Oxford staff he put together a Family Bee Day. Due to Covid there were 3 x 2hr sessions that families could book. 

OBKA had our observation hive and various beekeeping bits and pieces on display outside the main entrance. Indoors we had honey for sale, sampling of cut comb, wax candle making and more beekeeping products such as furniture polish and wax wraps and a narrated presentation introducing bees and beekeeping on a continuous loop

For each session Richard opened up his hive to get a super frame of honey out so that visitors could see, well, exactly where honey comes from! The observation hive fascinated children - and their parents. There was a constant stream of questions to the OBKA members and we like to think we knew most of the answers. Without doubt the most successful activity was candle making; just about all the material we had was used up and lots of children could be seen proudly holding the candles they made.

The OBKA team was: Richard Stansfield, Gary & Caroline Thomas, Mark Gwilt, Kitty Knight, Yvonne Parks, Jonathan Peel, Jonathan Watts, Dave Richardson and Mary Stansfield.

For each of the 3 sessions Richard lit his smoker and opened his hive with the visitors watching so they could see exactly where honey comes from! For the first 2 sessions we then took the frame of honey into the indoor demonstration area where visitors could have a sample of cut comb.

Click on any of the images below to be able to scroll through them full size.

We mustn't forget the 'indoors' team who did the comb honey tasting, made candles with the children and generally dealt with lots of questions!

Blenheim Palace Flower Show 2021 - Friday 25th, Saturday 26th, Sunday 27th July 2021

We have attended the Blenheim Flower show for a number of years (see previous years' Out and About) and were delighted to be back this year.

This year The Blenheim Palace Flower show actively promoted the fact that Oxfordshire BeeKeepers Association were having a stand on their website - see https://www.blenheimflowershow.co.uk/visitor-info/show-info/

We had a number of  OBKA members who attended and assisted on the stand. We had our ever popular Observation Hive explaining the 3 castes of honey bee: queen, worker (female) and drone (male) bees. Peter Hawkins' flying Bee demonstrations was also a great draw.

This year the visitors were allowed in to the Flower Show in regulated sessions due to Covid restrictions. We still managed to draw a good crowd and our stand was very busy, especially with families and children.

Peter and Eric would like to thank all the volunteers who assisted over the 3 days and who answered all the questions from the public.

A fabulous event.

Eric Perkins