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Thread: Avid Beekeeper Visiting Scotland

  1. #11
    Junior Member brushwoodnursery's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by gavin View Post
    Hello! There are active beekeeping associations in both Edinburgh and Fife so I'm sure that you'll get to meet up with some of them...
    ...
    Hope that helps!

    G.
    Gavin,
    Thanks so much for your generosity and helping to put this together! It was an excellent visit in both Edinburgh and Fife. I learned a lot and will have plenty to share with beeks back home. I may even let them taste the honey.

  2. #12
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by brushwoodnursery View Post
    Gavin,
    Thanks so much for your generosity and helping to put this together! It was an excellent visit in both Edinburgh and Fife. I learned a lot and will have plenty to share with beeks back home. I may even let them taste the honey.
    Hi Dan

    It was great to meet you - and your daughter. Hope the trip to Paris went well. All I did was to give you contact details so it was great that the local associations were so welcoming. A great talk and that was an amazing range of honeys you brought. Very interesting and instructive, and I also learned a new way to do honey tasting which I'll probably use on a market stall. It is time to move on from plastic spoons to wooden toothpicks! The other advantage is that you use a very small amount of honey each time so these 1.5 oz jars last a long time (and the jars you took home may last forever!).

    G.

  3. #13
    Senior Member Mellifera Crofter's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by gavin View Post
    ... Very interesting and instructive, and I also learned a new way to do honey tasting which I'll probably use on a market stall. It is time to move on from plastic spoons to wooden toothpicks! The other advantage is that you use a very small amount of honey each time so these 1.5 oz jars last a long time (and the jars you took home may last forever!).

    G.
    Can I ask about this new way, Gavin? Is it just an environmentally-friendly swapping of plastic for wood - or is there more to it?
    Kitta

  4. #14
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Flat wooden toothpicks. Dip, twirl, taste. At the Dundee Flower Show and other occasions I've used plastic spoons and then washed them for the next time or the next day at the Dundee show (and sifted out the unwashable ones with lipstick on and the split ones). Much easier to use disposable wooden toothpicks. I see them at £10 for 2,500.

  5. #15
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    Toothpicks!!!!
    You Scots sure do live up to your reputation
    I use wooden tea stirrers, slightly bigger and about £4.50/1000. Extravagant lot us "Southerners"

  6. #16
    Senior Member Kate Atchley's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Thymallus View Post
    Toothpicks!!!!
    You Scots sure do live up to your reputation
    I use wooden tea stirrers, slightly bigger and about £4.50/1000. Extravagant lot us "Southerners"
    Surely those are those same “flat wooden” toothpicks Gavin used! But us Scots could break them in half!


    Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

  7. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kate Atchley View Post
    Surely those are those same “flat wooden” toothpicks Gavin used! But us Scots could break them in half!
    No, totally different. These guys are about 5 inches long, won't slip between your teeth and are not tapered.
    Cutting them in half is a Yorkshire trait.....

  8. #18
    Junior Member brushwoodnursery's Avatar
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    *chuckling*

  9. #19
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    On the flat sticks and honey tasting. A friend gave me a sample of those long sticks (and the Yorkshire bisected version) last winter. Oh dear, I seem to be joining in that neighbour-baiting activity. Anyway, I'm not convinced (yet). There is that taste of wood and a roughness on the tongue that isn't that attractive. Do you get softwood and birch versions of these flat sticks? Brushwoodnursery's toothpicks seemed so much nicer. The ones I've seen online ('Diamond') are made from birchwood.

  10. #20
    Senior Member fatshark's Avatar
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    I use plastic disposable hot drink stirrers, not teaspoons, as I also think the wooden sticks (I've tried) feel a bit furry on the tongue. Perhaps not so environmentally friendly (though that's not a given - paper bags vs plastic bags favours the latter from energy in for production/distribution and recycling) but they are recyclable. They're big enough to get the 'taste' but not so big that a jar of honey disappears in minutes. One downside is that they're too flexible to use with set honey.

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