His work also included forensic investigations, including the Turin Shroud, which was found to contain pollen grains from Syria and the Lebanon. We were shown pictures of the Herbarium at Kew where Dr Ferguson was deputy keeper and where millions of plants are preserved
and used for scientific purposes. As beekeepers we were most interested in the details of individual pollen grains which are as distinctive as the flowers from which they are produced. By testing our honey we can identify where our bees
have been working.

Our thanks to Dr Ferguson for a splendid afternoon, which was concluded with a tea arranged by June.

May I remind members that Dave Williams is giving a talk and
demonstration of microscopy on Thursday 15^th November, at Hampton Bishop Village Hall, starting at 7.30pm. Dave will help us to identify pollen grains, nosema and tracheal mites.

Val

Now, the season is over, we can settle down and do a bit of planning for next year. Your committee have already set out a program for next year. It would appear, some require a little guidance on extraction. With this in mind we have included this in our programme. I will outline some of the important steps. Temperature is a most important factor when extracting honey and timing is also very important. If you get these steps right it will make your extraction much much easier. In recent years, with so much rape around, honey setting in the comb has become a problem for some. This is why timing is so important. If you wait too long in the spring you will almost certainly get honey setting in the comb. You will need to take this honey off your bees just as the flowers are going over. You will need to try and keep the temperature up. You can achieve this in many different ways, an old chest freezer with a 60 W bulb is one way. You can place your super in over night, and they will extract much easier when they are warm. The room where you do your extracting should be kept at a relatively high temperature. All these points make the process much easier; timing also has a big impact on how well honey will extract in this part of the world. You should aim to remove your honey towards the end of July. This seems to be about the right time before temperatures start to go down for the autumn. Indeed, it is important for those living near heather. You do not want to mix heather with your flower honey. It will give your honey a cloudy appearance and a very distinctive flavour. We have talked about the key elements for good extraction, the next step is to uncap the frames. Now, this can be achieved in several ways: knife or uncapping fork. You will need a receptacle to take the cappings which you slice off- this can be any open top vessel with some form of coarse screen to facilitate drainage. Most of the honey will drain from the cappings with this type of arrangement, it will leave you with a quantity of cappings after a period of drainage. Now you have separated the honey form the cappings you need to drain the honey into a settling tank through some muslin. Keeping the temperature up will make this task much easier. Leave your honey to settle over night then drain into clean receptacle with an air tight lid. This honey can be stored at about 50 Fahrenheit for quite a long period. Now, what do we do with cappings? By this time they will have drained most of the honey away. Again, there are several ways to deal with these; there will be a residue of honey on the cappings, which you can wash with clean rain water and with the resulting liquid make mead. When the cappings have drained, you can render them down. This can be achieved in any vessel with a controlled heat source. The vessel which you use should have sloping sides with a little water in the bottom to make the removal of wax easier. When set there will be a little dross on the resulting cake of wax which can be easily removed. This is not the only way you can achieve these tasks, there are many more ways to do the same job. Depending on the size of your operation do not overheat your honey or wax. The melting point of wax is approximately 143 Fahrenheit. Your honey should not be taken over 110 Fahrenheit. You should be able to carry out most of the requirements without going above this range of temperature. Now, what about the honey which you have extracted from the comb? This will need to be strained again, temperature is important. You should have no problem filtering if you use one of the appliances for this purpose. Settling tanks usually have a coarse and fine gauze in them, which in most cases is satisfactory. I have never found it necessary to go above this to get good results. You may need to use a muslin on the tank to take out the fine pieces of wax. I have never needed to go above this to achieve good results.