Well its been a couple of days......ok so i lie lol its just that i get easily distracted with things :) (ask Kim she says i do all the time...) any way lets see whats been happening; because of the mild weather the bee's are still out foraging, hive 1 which is the more aggressive of the hives surprisingly does not have as many bees as hive 2 but there are times when it is certainly the busiest of the 2 hives. Hive 2 I took a super out as the bee's were not really doing much except filling brood with stores now in their readiness for winter, i took out the sugar syrup as well, as a lot of time it was going mouldy which is all i need; bee's with runny bottoms lol. It looks as though the drones have been kicked out of both hives but with the darker nights the bees are leaving it later to get back to the hives, which means i'm ending up with a few bee's sharing the lean to with the rabbits and chickens every evening :) which makes it fun when i'm feeding the rabbits and i'm getting bee's buzzing around me. Anyway i will leave the hives now until january when they may get some mite preventative (speaking to one of our club bee keepers) i will check once more b4 then to put mouse guards in and make sure stores are ok.
October has been a little quiet, though Kim and myself went to the London Championship show which was a nice day out....London Championship Show? whats that Steve? i hear you say :) well let me explain
back in 1999 Kim and myself went to a rabbit show in a little village hall near Colchester and became fascinated with the variety and colours you could get....we looked at maybe showing and breeding ourselves and started up with the minilop. Over the next few years we became very involved with 'the fancy' we had other breeds entering our shed, making up our own web site
http://www.taraxstud.20m.com/ both of us becoming judges (Kim for the National Miniature Lop Club, and myself for the Rare Varieties Rabbit Club) We even ran our own local club with Kim being secretary and myself as show manager. We won a few best in shows, travelled around the country making an enormous amount of friends along the way. When Kim became disabled it basically all stopped and the last 5 years we sort of dissapeared from the show scene. Well even though we got rid of all our equipement and stock we still kept 6 rabbits as pets, then when i saw an advert for the 2 day London Show i managed to persuade Kim to come along....at 1st Kim admitted she was very nervous about going and yet it turned out to be a fantastic day meeting lots of old friends, we had people asking advice on their stock, asking Kim about colour genetics (thats another story lol) and asking when are we both coming back into the fancy.
The shows are not just about rabbits but also other small mammals such as rats, mice etc. for me it was the Thrianta rabbit as thats what i used to show, and what was great was that the Thriantas have broken away from the Rare Varieties Club to start their own club up now.
Kim ended up talking with everyone lol (this is Karen Malcolm of the Rare Varieties Club)
We even stayed to see the best in show being judged before we had to shoot off home.
Well by the time we got home we both decided we are going back into showing and breeding again but that will be next year as i need to clear the garage, order some eqipement as well as some new stock...so even more stuff for me to do lol.
So thats it for the moment the only other thing thats happened is we had a halloween party but i'll save that for the next instalment :) until then l8rs
