The Art of Photography

It's simple, isn't it?

 

You just point the camera at the thing you want to photograph, press the button and there you are - a perfect picture.

 

Or maybe not.

 

Putting my products on Etsy.com means I need to photograph them to show customers what I sell. Over the past few weeks I've discovered the process is much more difficult than I'd originally imagined.

 

First there's the background to consider.

 

 

And should I photograph outside in natural light (or the rain!) or inside.

If the light's too bright, then there's too much shadow.

 

Next, should I add an accessory, like a flower? Lyndsey James, a professional photographer suggests I should, to give the photos a sense of scale. Her advice has been unbelievably helpful. Check out www.photocraft.org for details of the courses she runs.

 

She also recommended a natural wooden background.

 

Being a beekeeper I have lots of things like that around. The one I've finally settled on is the roof of a beehive. Turned on it's side it creates a natural shelf with backdrop. Now I just have to remember not to actually use it with my bees. I don't think any colony would be pleased to have their roof removed so I can photograph my products.

 

So finally I'm all set.

 

Then my cat decides he wants to help!

Why don't honey bees read the manuals?

Why don't honey bees read the manuals? 

 With my new queens arriving I'd prepared two new, queenless colonies at the weekend to take them.

A frame of bees

 

When my new queens arrived this lunch time I went straight up to pop them into their new hives. One colony was ready. They knew they were queenless and (fingers crossed) will accept the queen I'd called Roxie.

Making up a queenless colony


The other had eggs in it - a sure sign there was a ...laying queen there. I knew I hadn't put one there so where had it come from? One look at a neighbouring colony told me. This one had a very young queen - one that must have been still flying - and they had all abandoned their hive and joined what should have been a queenless one. There was no point in putting my other new queen (the one I've called Scarlett) in there. They only like one queen so she would have been killed. 

 



Pollen - essential food for bees
The different colours are different types. These bees have a varied diet

 So it's back home to prepare another new queenless colony for her.



A bee returning to her hive with her pollen baskets full

Why do beekeepers read the manuals? It's not just about what to do when, but understanding why and being able to recognise and deal with the unexpected. Bees are absolutely fascinating creatures. Their behaviour, lifestyle and logic is so alien to ours. I love working with them and discovering more about them every day.

Beeswax Flowers

As well as candles, soaps, paintings in beeswax, I've recently started making flowers out of beeswax. I thought you might like to know how they're done, so...

First get the wax. I'm going to make yellow roses. The beeswax I'm going to use is already a lovely yellow colour so there's no need to die it. For a different coloured rose, or if my wax was not such a good flower colour, I would.

The petals are cut from thin sheets of wax. These are made by pouring molten wax onto a wet sheet of plywood.



I need yellow for the petals



and green for the leaves.

Next I prepare the stalk.

 This is florists wire with a little cotton wool on the end. The cotton wool is dipped into molten wax. The petals will attached securely to this. The wire is then coated in florists tape.

The centre petals are a little different to the rest. Look how they curl.

 Each rose needs at least 8 petals cut out.

They're individually shaped and then curled around the centre petal one by one. Shaping and firmly attaching to the stem needs warm hands. At this stage they really begin to look like roses.

Now the leaves. A smaller piece of wire is prepared to take the leaves, which are cut out of double thickness wax. The double thickness is so that the wire can fit between them and hold them securely.

Once individual leaves are attached, they need marking with veins and the edges serrating.

The calyx and rosehip of the rose are made from the sheets of green wax and placed just behind the rose head before the leaves are attached using florists tape, giving the final result.

Once made, the roses are quite robust. They need only avoid extremes of temperature.

It's time consuming and quite fiddly to make each rose. While it's possible to make them for weddings I suggest you contact a wedding planner like Tillyboo Events for an alternative.

Neonicotinoid pesticides and honey bees

Just recently I've heard a lot about neonicotinoids and the effects they are having on honey bees and other insects. People tell me how outraged they are that they have not been banned in the UK yet. Today I was approached by several people wanting to share how much they support beekeepers, like myself, by wanting to demand a ban on neonicotinoids. These are good people, caring people but people misled by media hype and political tacticians.

There is no conclusive evidence that neonicotinoids used as pesticides kill bees. More research is being carried out but if they really were as bad as the media made out, surely the scientists would have noticed? Or beekeepers would have conclusive proof instead of anecdotal? The Chemicals Regulation Directorate are concerned about the plight of insects and do much to ensure that bee are not harmed.  They would never have allowed the use of neonicotinoids if they were as harmful as the media have recently been suggesting.

What would happen if neonicotinoids were banned? People need food. There are more of us to be fed and less farmed land. There is also a demand for food to be cheap. Without pesticides more people would starve and food prices would soar. It's not a realistic idea. Neonicotinoids may be banned in the future if the ongoing research proves they are as dangerous as the media would have us believe.  If they were banned, what would be used instead? They are certainly not as dangerous to bees as some of the pesticides used in the past. Would we have to return to using those?

Regulation of pesticides is a complex business. No only the product but the way the product is used is regulated. On most farms, specialists are contracted to do the job. In Nottinghamshire, where I live, beekeepers have an excellent relationship with farm spray contractors, via the Nottinghamshire Beekeepers Spray Liaison Officer, a beekeeper in a voluntary role that spray contractors contact in advance if there is any danger of bees being harmed by there activities. Harm is minimised by spray contractors working very early in a morning or late at night when flying insects (like bees) are not about.

Does the average gardener take that much care when spraying pesticides on their flowers? A few do, but not many.  The average gardener can also buy much more dangerous pesticides to use in their gardens than can be used on farm crops.

The number of bees of all kinds has been in decline over the last few years. People need to be concerned. The media are doing a good job highlighting the decline. The reasons for the decline are still not fully understood. More research is needed. The media is not doing a good job of telling people this.

If you are concerned about the effects of pesticides on bees and want to write to the government about your concerns, ask for more research, not a ban on a product that may be much safer to bees than any alternative. Think what's in your own garden shed and that of your neighbours. Think about the time of day you or you neighbours use pesticides in your garden.

For more honey bee information go to www.bbka.org. Their 'Adopt a beehive' scheme raises money for research and training.

A couple of my bees foraging yesterday.

Soap making

Commercial soap and natural soap are two completely different products. They're both soap but that's about all that's the same.

I only discovered natural cold process soap a couple of years ago. Prior to that I had eczema on my hands and was using prescribed steroid creams. I didn't like using steroids but my doctor said nothing else could help. Then I discovered a recipe for natural soap with honey and as I started using it my eczema disappeared.

Adding honey to the soap makes it even better than just natural soap. Honey is a natural antiseptic and an emollient. Now my favourite soap is my own Natural Soap with Honey that I hand make in small batches. That's how I spent a couple of hours this morning.

The soap making process is fairly simple, but can be dangerous. Soap is produced by a chemical reaction between a lye solution with fats and oils. The lye solutions is a strong alkali and will burn if any gets on the skin - I wear an apron, gloves and safety goggles.

Look at the ingredients of a commercial soap and you will often see tallowate. This is soap made from tallow - animal fat. It's cheap and smells unpleasant. Cheap is what's important to commercial soap manufactures. They want to make a profit. Tallow doesn't make a good soap and needs to be deodorized and then an artificial perfume added. Some things added to soap are known to be carcinogenic; some are know to dry and damage skin. Soap manufacturers make soaps that sell, so they look good, they smell good, they're often heavily advertised - it doesn't actually make them very good.

The fats and oils I use both feel and smell good before I start the soap making process.  It's exactly the same as cooking - if you use quality raw ingredients you get a quality end product. Of course, the commercial manufacturer is more interested in profit so will use cheaper alternatives. Hide it and tell the customer there's something good about the product and it will sell.  I use relatively few ingredients in my soap. There is no need to add anything to alter the smell, texture or colour.

Rant over about ingredients. The process is different too. Natural soap is difficult to mill and roll. Commercial soap makers use a continuous process, raw ingredients poured in at one end and soap rolled out at the end. Natural soap would stick to the machinery and clog it. This is because when soap is made from lye and fats, glycerine is also produced. Glycerine is very moisturising and can be used by people with sensitive skins, but it makes the soap too sticky for the commercial process. To remove this problem, commercial soap manufactures remove the glycerine and sell it separately.  

The resulting soap is also easier to mould and takes artificial colour and perfume better. Genuine natural cold process soap doesn't colour well. The so-called hand made soaps that are brightly coloured and moulded are actually commercial soaps that have been hand coloured and moulded. It's called melt and pour soap. Some of the results look really lovely, but the soap they're made from is as commercially made as any in the supermarket.

So, back to what I was doing this morning. All I've really done is started the process. I now have two boxes wrapped in towels in which the process of soap making is taking place. The towels keep the heat in that's generated and make the process quicker. Tomorrow I'll unwrap them and cut them into bars. After time to cure they'll be wrapped and labelled.

After discovering just how good the soap is I wanted other people to try it. The regulations about selling soap are quite stringent, as they should be, and it was quite daunting going through to process to ensure my soap was legal to sell. Since I started selling it the feedback I've received tells me that other people feel the same about my soap as I do. The vast majority of sales are to people who have bought it before or who have had it recommended to them by friends and family. Only last week I was approached in a restaurant by someone who wanted to know if I was the person who sold the soap that got rid of the dry patched on her friend's skin. Could I bring some in for her next time I was there?

Soap. It's used everyday. How's yours been made? What's in it? Is it actually damaging your skin?

Soap available via www.BeeswaxHandmade.co.uk or www.etsy.com/shop/BeeswaxHandmade

Bee Diary - March 2013

Yesterday I went out into the snow to check my bees. In a normal March I would wait for a warm sunny day, don a full beesuit, light my smoker and check right inside.

 

 Right inside means just that. I'd take the hive apart and lift out individual frames of wax comb to see what's there. I'd expect the single queen in each hive would have been very busy and several frames would be full of eggs, lava and sealed cells where the lava metamorphosis into adult bees. These frames would be covered with adult bees, feeding the lava, leaning the hive, building the wax, returning with food or maybe just being there, keeping the brood nest warm. Seeing frames like this means all is well. The honey bee colony is building up as it should, so it can collect enough food to make honey, both to see it through the next winter and for me to collect.

 

Seeing frames like this means there is a good queen there. There is no need for me to see her, but I may be lucky. She's slightly larger, with longer legs and walks with more or a waddle than the other bees, all of them her daughters. She doesn't look a lot different from her daughters and doesn't like the light so often she hides. The first time I see her on a really good day, I pick her up and dob a little paint on her back so she's easier to find if ever I do need to. On a warm day in March, I do this quickly so as not to disturb them too much and as I put each hive back together I'd be looking forward to taking off the first honey crop of the year in April.

But back to this March. Normally I would never open up a hive in the snow. Normally there would be no need. This year is very different. Honey bees store enough food at the start of the winter to take them through to early spring when they can collect pollen and nectar from willow, snowdrop and other early spring flowers. With more food coming in, the queen is prompted to lay more eggs. This provides the worker bees the hive needs in the summer to collect the honey harvest. This year the winter has lasted so long, bees have run out of stored food and, not only is it too cold for them to fly, there is no flowers out for them to forage on. My quick peek inside yesterday was just to check they have some food. I've been feeding them for a few weeks now with a sugar fondant. All I was checking was that they still had some food and that they had found it. When it's really cold they cluster close together for warmth and would rather starve to death than walk a few inches to look for food.

Thankfully, all my hives had sufficient food. They should survive until better weather comes and they can fly again. But there was no sign in any of them that the queen was laying well. It takes six weeks for a bee to develop from egg to foraging. How will this delay affect the hive's ability to collect enough food in the summer? I will have no early honey crop this year. Will I have any at all?

After checking my bees and feeling grateful that they are still alive I checked my emails. There was an email from the government's National Bee Unit, Starvation Risk from Cold Weather - check your bees have food!

After last year's bad weather, honey bees are now in a worse position than they've been for a long time.

Find out more about beekeeping and way to help bees at www.bbka.org.uk

 

Or check this new blog for more on the plight of bees http://bees-make-honey.co.uk/blog/

This picture was taken in my garden a couple of days ago - before the heaviest snow!

 

One of the things I do is make candles, pure 100% beeswax candles. No other candle wax produces as good a candle as beeswax, but over the years I've discovered that not all beeswax candles are as good as they should be. People buying them are being conned.

Here are 5 things you should look for when buying beeswax candles

1. Is it really all pure beeswax?

Most candles are made using blended waxes and usually contain mostly paraffin wax. Beeswax, a natural and superior wax for candle making, is much more expensive. If you don't see beeswax mentioned on the label, you won't have beeswax in the candle. If it does say beeswax look a little more closely. I've seen candles labelled as '100% pure beeswax' only to find that the candle contains this, but only as 10% of the waxes in the candle - the rest were paraffin waxes!


2. Has the wick been primed?

Not always easy to tell from a photograph, but obvious if you can actually see the candle. Priming a wick isn't difficult, but it's an extra step in making a candle and so many candle makers don't bother. As a result, their candles don't light as easily, especially the first time. It still matters even if you never intend to burn your candle; unprimed wick frays. So how can you tell if the wick has been primed? A primed wick has been soaked in wax before being used to make the candle. A wick primed for beeswax will have the colour of beeswax. If the wick is white, it definitely hasn't been primed.

Don't forget that natural beeswax comes in a variety of shades; properly primed wick made be a different shade to the candle it's in!


3.Has it got the right wick?

Not easy to tell by looking, but you'll get the best burn from a beeswax candle if the wick used has been made for beeswax and not paraffin or other waxes. The braiding to make the wick is different.

The size of wick is also important; too large and the candle will burn too quickly; too small and the flame will be weak or molten wax will smoother the candle and stop it burning. Candle testing is the only way to be certain the wick is right.


4.Are the candles tested?

Testing a candle means burning it so obviously the candle you're thinking of buying won't have been tested, but the maker should have tested candles like it. Testing ensures the candle has the right wick, that it lights and re-lights easily and how long the candle burns for among other things. If the candle hasn't been tested, how do they know it's right and more importantly, how do you?


5. How has the candle been made?

Most candles are made in moulds, but not all. They produce very good candles with good burn times. Rolled candles burn quicker, because, no matter how tightly they're rolled, there is some air between the layers. The longest lasting candles are hand dipped. A skilled candle dipper can ensure there are no air bubbles at all in their candle. This is very labour intensive and rare these days - be prepared to pay more for a candle like this.