I responded to the request this year for stewards at the Gardner’s World Live at the NEC, and I must say I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
I am glad to say that Sutton Coldfield and North Birmingham Beekeepers were well represented, I saw Aliyah on the Saturday morning shift and Tod and myself on the afternoon shift. I must say I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
The two free tickets and free parking (right next to the show entrance) was a too good to be true offer, and the catch was all I had to do was spend my afternoon talking about bees, hardly a catch more like a usual weekend!
For those of you that have not been before, the Gardner’s show is very good, with some truly inspirational show gardens and because we got there early, we were able to walk around all these and the Good Food Show well before my shift began.
At 13:30 I reported for duty, and put my BBKA badge on and then set myself up in the mock up hive, and chatted to members of the public that came through the door. The weather certainly helped, just a bit of rain in the morning, and then a touch at the very end which helped wrap the day up.
The BBKA had a really good set up with plenty of stuff to keep visitors interested including an old Land Rover filled with products of the hive, activities for children to do, bee friendly flowers, an observation hive, hive to honey jar processing of honey, and honey tasting (I have finally managed to taste some ivy honey, which not as bad as some people say).
It was a great day, helped out by warm sunny weather, and plenty of stuff to engage the visitors with.
I would thoroughly recommend anyone who loves talking about bees to volunteer for a steward role at one of many events that BBKA support, keep an eye open for the emails.
