South Cheshire Honey Show 2022

By Alan Smith, Show Manager

South Cheshire Beekeepers enjoyed another great Honey Show on 13th October 2022. This year’s Show was run along much the same lines as the 2021 Show, being judged by Joyce Nisbet behind closed doors while the audience enjoyed refreshments, tasted the 10 honeys entered into the new Black Jar class and voted for their favourites, and listened to Andrew Easterbrook’s excellent presentation of waxcraft which focused on the way to make foundation sheets from beeswax.

The Honey Show is as much a show as a competition. I included 20 classes again this year and decided to open all classes to novice and experienced competitors, so that nobody was excluded from anything. To encourage more people to enter for the first time, I awarded one point to each entry for novices in addition to their place score. This year’s Show had 62 entries from 13 competitors, of whom 4 were novices. I am always delighted at what a good display we get from so few people, and it should encourage anyone who has never tried exhibiting anything to have a go, as everyone who enters makes such a big difference to the enjoyment the Show brings. Everyone who staged entries this year got a prize, whether it was a place card, a rosette or a trophy!

The Anderlotti Shield for Most Points in Show, Tony Gentil Trophy for Honeycomb and Cynthia Chadwick Plate were awarded to Arwel Barrett. The Danish Bacon Trophy for Honey was awarded to Frank Kirkham, the Bob Parsonage Shield for Beeswax and the Frank Hilder. Trophy for Mead were awarded to Pete Sutcliffe. The NatWest Trophy for Most Novice Points went to Hywel Lewis.

There is quite a lot of work involved in making the Show a success, and I’d like very much to thank Joyce Nisbet for judging, Nicola Summerfield and Dee Smith for stewarding, David Fray for running the Black Jar tasting and Andrew Easterbrook for his great talk. I’d also like to thank everyone who entered, who made the Show such a pleasure for everyone. Well done to you all!