Sixty five years of Auckland Beekeeping

Today was the day the Auckland Bee clubs celebrated its 65th anniversary. The committee has been very busy arranging all aspects of the day, including a honey show and guest speakers.

The weather was pretty good, but the event was hosted in two rooms at the Unitec campus. This was a good idea because we had a couple of showers throughout the day.

The day started with a speech by Ted Legget, who was a past president of the Bee club. His talk was about the history of the club and was very interesting. I have recorded this and will see what the quality is like, and may release as part of a podcast.

Allan Hollands talk was next and he explained why he got into beekeeping. It was so he and his wife could purchase a holiday home in Spain. But things didn’t work out as planned.

We then had a quiz that didn’t go so well for our team . Some the questions were about bee biology and others about bee diseases.

Some of the club hives were then opened up for inspections, it was good to see some new visitors getting involved in the inspections.

The Honey Show results

Dennis Wait and Maureen Maxwell were the judges today and here are the results of day, overall they were very happy with the level of entries this year.

The contest sounds like a great idea, I must make the effort next year and enter some honey.

The results that I heard were:-

Class 1 – Extraction Frame

1st – Carol Downer
2nd – Robin Brehmer
3rd – Melisa Gunn

Class 2 – Honey Frame

1st – Carol Downer

Class 3 – Dark Honey Granulated

1st – Alan Harwood
2nd – Carol Downer
3rd – Robin Brehmer

Class 4 – Dark Honey Liquid

1st – Oliva Sheehan
2nd – James Fitzgerald
3rd – Carol Downer

Class 5 – Medium Honey Granulated

1st – James Fitzgerald
2nd – Alan Harwood
3rd – Robin Brehmer / Paul Walsh

Class 6 – Medium Honey Liquid

1st – Carol Downer
2nd – Paul Walsh
3rd – James Fitzgerald

Class 7 – Light Honey Granulated

1st – Alan Harwood
2nd – Jennifer Finucane
3rd – Carol Downer

Class 10 – Cut Comb Honey

1st – Carol Downer
2nd – Melisa Gunn

Class 11 – Wax Block

1st – Robin Brehmer

* Results not official, just what I managed to write down.

Here are all the photos from today:-