We always try to do something a bit different, and a bit ‘Christmassy’ for the December 2nd Monday meeting and this year was no exception.
Ray Pearce had volunteered to be quizmaster and Julia, doubtless with Paul’s help, said she would arrange some suitable nibbles. A number of members turned up in suitable Christmas jumpers that added to the festivities; you’ll see later Ray’s rather impressive reindeer jumper (I use the phrase ‘impressive’ loosely).
A Christmas meeting would not be complete without some suitable drinks so in addition to the normal tea and coffee we bought some mulled wine (with cloves, cinnamon sticks and orange slices, no expense spared!) but that was really quite ordinary compared to Ray’s Mulled Mead. You can see it on the table in the picture below in a stainless steel flask (!). Apparently it was quite delicious, according to those who survived. The mulled wine also went down well (and everyone survived).
Once Julia had put out all the lovely nibbles and everyone had taken their fill it was time to sort ourselves into ‘teams’.
A certain amount of horse trading then appeared to happen as members sought to be on the table with those most likely to know the answers to a beekeeping Christmas quiz. However it was clear that not everyone could be on David Blower’s team and we eventually sorted ourselves out into 5 quite unequal teams.
Ray had prepared 2 sets of questions, bee-related ones and not-general knowledge ones. Several challenges were made to some of the more ambiguous questions (most of them) but Ray’s answer to all challenges was the same ‘in order to challenge you first have to have a drink of my mulled mead’. We were all happy with the questions.
But in the end I have to say it was all very fairly done, the questions were in fact excellent, Ray was a superb question-master and any confusion sensitively dealt with.
And it just so happens that the team I was in won.
Christmas Picture Quiz
For those who couldn’t make the December meeting we have a picture quiz, thanks to Paul Baines.
All you need to do is to work out what is going on with the hives, below:
A clue is that Paul is trying to eliminate a deadly enemy from his hives…….
We hope to see as many of you as possible at the January meeting (13th Jan) when we have Colleen Reichling, a National Bee Inspector, giving the talk – it will be fascinating.