#19. HONEY COMPETITION: The harvest is in - let the games begin!

I've been moving toward winterizing the bees since early October.  This includes checking brood boxes and honey stores and feeding heavy sugar syrup (2:1 sugar to H2O, by weight) as needed.  The goal is to have a hive chock full of stores for the winter:  all frames should be filled and capped, signaling that the bees have enough to eat until March or so.  I'm using styrofoam hive-top feeder boxes, and as you can see, the bees go crazy for the syrup.  They are protected from falling into - and drowning in - the syrup by a clear plastic panel that affords them just enough room to maneuver, while providing a foothold so they can rush in and out of the feeding area.  Having this kind of 'indoor' feeder is great in that the bees can use it 24/7.  In fact, one of my favorite things is visiting late at night just before going to bed, lifting the cover and examining the feeder action by flashlight.

A peek under the hood

I never did get a late crop of honey, so my total harvest was around 75 lbs., most of it from Team Red.  There were some capped frames in all three hives late in September that I could have extracted, but I decided to leave them for the bees.  And so I turned my attentions to preparing for my first honey competition, which was to take place in Bethpage, L.I., at a colonial restoration village.  In the great tradition of state and county competitive agricultural fairs, the Long Island Fair features all kinds of livestock, produce and crafts from Queens, Nassau and Suffolk counties.


I got some tips about the proper way to present honey for competition from teacher Ray Lackey, mentor Peter Bizzoso, and doing a lot of reading on the internet.  One of the most important things in honey competition is cleanliness.  Honey must be meticulously strained and free of any foreign objects.  The 'queenline' style glass jars - the gold standard for competition - have to be polished and filled to exactly the right level.  Even a fingerprint or a piece of lint on the jar will send your score down.  That means that after the bottles are washed and polished, they are not touched by ungloved human hands.


I was pretty disappointed with the number of entries.  I entered 2 classes:  light honey and amber honey.  My light entry won second place.  First place went to my teacher, Ray Lackey, so I can't complain about that.  Problem is that there were only our 2 entries in the class.  So if you want to look at it in a different way (which I don't care to do), I came in last.  My other class had a total of 3 entries, and I took second again.  

The exciting thing, though, and what really made all the effort worthwhile, was that the judging is very formal and you get a detailed score card.  I was thrilled that I got high marks for things I could control - like cleanliness.  I also got a perfect score in flavor.  Moisture and crystal content are what dragged my scores down, and there's little I can do to affect those categories, at least at my current level of knowledge.



After that inaugural experience, I was all ginned up about the prospect of a competition that was to take place in Holtsville, L.I. on October 16, as part of the Long Island Beekeepers' annual meeting.  Based on the SRO crowd at the LIBC-sponsored lecture I'd attended (see post #14) I was expecting a heavy turnout.  And when I saw the entry form and the number of classes, I was overwhelmed.  I decided to enter as many classes as I could, and worked for days to get my entries ready. Besides the 2 colors of honey, I entered the Soft Cookie class, the Candy class, and the Gadget class.  Here's an edited version of the LIBC entry details:  

Extracted Honey

Class ONE: One jar of water white honey

Class TWO: One jar of light honey

Class THREE: One jar of light amber honey   

Class FOUR: One jar of amber honey

Class FIVE: One jar of dark honey

Comb Honey

Class SIX: One section box of comb honey 

Class SEVEN: One package of cut comb 4" square honey

Class EIGHT: One circular section of comb honey

Class NINE: One shallow super frame of comb honey

Class TEN: One shallow super frame of extracting honey

Class ELEVEN: One full depth super frame of extracting honey

Creamed Honey 

Class Twelve: 16 oz. clear container of creamed honey

Chunk Honey 

Class THIRTEEN: 16 oz. clear container of chunk honey

Novelty Packaged Honey 

Class FOURTEEN: One honey-filled container

Beeswax

Class FIFTEEN: Single piece, pure beeswax, weight 2 Ibs.

Class SIXTEEN: Candles, dipped, one pair, pure beeswax 

Class SEVENTEEN: Candles, molded, one pair pure  beeswax 

Class EIGHTEEN: Candles, fancy, one pair pure beeswax  

Class NINETEEN: Novelty beeswax, with additives permitted

Mead

Class TWENTY: Mead, DRY   

Class TWENTY-ONE: Mead, Sweet 

Class TWENTY-TWO: Mead, made with fruit juices 

Class TWENTY-THREE: Mead), sparkling, made without fruit juice

Honey Cookery And Gadget Classes:

Class ONE: Cookies, crisp, one dozen      

Class TWO: Cookies, soft, one dozen 

ClassTHREE: Bars or Brownies, one cake    

Class FOUR A: Cake, unfrosted, one cake

Class FOUR B: Cake, frosted, one cake    

Class FIVE: Yeast bread, one loaf

Class SiX: Yeast bread, fancy, one loaf    

Class SEVEN: Yeast rolls, one dozen

Class EIGHT: Quick bread, (Fruit or nuts optional), one loaf

Class NINE: Muffins, (Fruits or nuts optional), one dozen

Class TEN: Candy, 1/2 ib or 12 pieces 

Class ELEVEN: Pie, one pie (rules apply to filling)

Class TWELVE Granola, two cups or more

Class THIRTEEN: products baked with 100% honey used for sweetener 

Class FOURTEEN: Honey spreads, 1 jar 

Class FIFTEEN: Salads, one container of salad 

Class SIXTEEN: Sauce, 1 jar       

Class SEVENTEEN: Miscellaneous cookery 

ClassEIGHTEEN: Arts and Crafts (Honey labels have been included in this class).

Class NINETEEN; Gadgets 

The Sunday morning of the show I loaded up the car with my precious cargo, plus my 3 dogs (an even more 'precious cargo').  Mapquest had indicated that it would take me about an hour and a half to get to the event.  I decided to give myself 2 hours.  The first indication that the trip would not go smoothly was the virtual parking lot that was Sunday-westbound-Hamptons traffic.   Uggh.  I'd lost over 1/2 an hour by the time I hit the Long Island Expressway.  And Tiki, my 9-month-old puppy was horribly carsick, so I was pulling over to clean her - and her crate - with alarming regularity.  Thankfully, she was heartbreakingly brave about the whole thing.  Her little tail never stopped wagging, as if to say that nausea was a price she was willing to pay for an adventure.  

Alas, the challenges of the trip didn't end with traffic and dog vomit.  For some reason I thought that the show was at a lovely site I'd visited (and described in post #12) near St. James.  I'd pictured a glorious day out among rolling hills, the dogs frolicking in the fields on what was going to be a warm and lovely afternoon.  Only when I drove up to the gates, they were locked.  Panic welled up in my throat as I realized immediately that I was in the wrong place.  And I was already late.  And when I sorted out where I was actually meant to be, I noted that it would take me another half an hour to get there.  To add insult to injury, it was back in the direction from whence I'd come.  My underarms were clammy; my mouth was dry.  Off I went in search of the show.

I finally found where the competition was actually supposed to be, at the Holtsville Ecology Center, a sort of childrens' zoo-cum-park.  "No Dogs Allowed" on big signs all over the place.  Poor Tiki, I thought fleetingly.  And by now I was so late I thought I must have missed the competition.  I ran from entrance to entrance, door to door, gate to gate.  It was Sunday.  Free admission.  No employees to be found anywhere, and no sign of anyone who looked remotely like he was a beekeeper.  

Eventually I found a couple of security guards and they told me to drive down a no-access road, which they indicated by pointing, turn right at the end, and I'd find my group.  Which I did.  Drive down the road, that is.  There was no group anywhere, except a large group of Canada geese.  And the road was wending around and I didn't see any other cars.  Just me and tons of joggers, strollers, families.  And me.  On, what it turns out, was an asphalt jogging trail.  I drove for at least a mile or more, creeping along so as not to up-end any pedestrians.  And they did look at me kind of quizzically, but surprisingly, I thought, without signs of outrage.  I responded by giving my best imitation of a royal wave, and mouthing official business through the windshield.  Yeah, 'official business' in my Honda Element with the salt-crusted windows and the California license plates.  

And then it got worse.  I reached the end of the trail.  I had assumed - and hoped - that the trail would be a loop and that would take me back to where I'd started, near the Canada geese.  No such luck.  I had to turn around and retrace my route back through the now not-at-all-amused fresh air fiends;  by now, they'd had time to reflect on my unorthodox use of their trail system.  Fists were clenched and raised, middle fingers were brandished.  I was sure that there was going to be a squad car waiting for me when I found my way back to Point A.  By the time I did make it back, the security guards were gone.  Thank God, perhaps.  


Daunted, but not quite ready to give up, I decided to explore another no-entry roadway.  This time the path landed me behind a grouping of big, ugly prefab steel buildings with metal siding that was peeling off in great curls and punctuated by metal doors that were rusted and corroded around the margins.  There were tractors and large dumpsters and dump trucks parked here and there.  I was looking around, just taking it all in, now pretty much resigned that my day was a total waste.  I was resisting thinking about all the hours I'd spent on preparing for the competition.  I could hear a horse whinny somewhere.  Through a distant chain link fence I could just make out a pair of emu in a wooden pen.  In a far corner was a greenhouse, and through its open door I thought I spied orchids.  Perhaps, under different circumstances, this was the kind of place I could enjoy exploring.  Just then, a woman appeared from out of the greenhouse.  I ran up to her and asked (by now with no expectation that I would ever find the Long Island Beekeepers) if she knew where a group was meeting.  She pointed at one of the ugly steel buildings.  I creaked open one of the rusted doors, and there they all were.  The LI Beekeepers, just finishing up their annual meeting.  And though the judging had begun, I was not too late to enter all my stuff.     

I took first place in every class except light amber honey, where I came 3rd out of 4 entries.  But before anyone gets too impressed, I was also the only entry in all the classes I won.  (Not to put too fine a point on it, I took a 3rd place in the only class where I encountered actual competition.)  And out of the almost 50 classes offered, there were no entries at all in about 35 of the classes.  Most classes that did get an entry had only one.  It was pretty demoralizing.  Clearly, this area of LIBC club activities is atrophying.  There was a bright spot, however:  my 'gadget' entry - the drill-driven garbage can honey extractor I invented - got the award for Best in Show.  It was awarded by my teacher, Ray Lackey, himself an inventor and holder of countless patents, so I considered it a high honor.

My winning garbage can extractor