Laurence Edwards tours the Thorn Beekeeping stand at the first Beekeeping Show, walking through their full range of suits, hive tools, smokers, and hive types. Director Rebecca highlights new items including a bee-lining box inspired by Prof. Tom Seeley and Canadian-painted cedar hives as expected bestsellers.
It's Friday the 24th of February and they let me inside for a sneak preview into the beekeeping show. I'm at the Thorn Beekeeping stand. I'm going to take a look around, meet some of the owners, and see what's on offer. So Thorn Beekeeping, one of the biggest, if not the biggest, definitely the oldest beekeeping supplier in the UK. I have bought tons and tons of stuff from them throughout the years. Quality is always amazing. I'm so excited to see what they've got. So what I love about the Thorn stand is that they've always got a little bit of everything. You can see here you've got 101 different types of tamper label, all of the jar labels as well. They've got honey signs down here, tamper rolls. Let's carry on going along. Some ventilated bee suits, some standard bee suits, every single different type of adapter floor that you want up there. Then we're moving into gauntlets and gloves, smoker cartridges, really nice big bright yellow smoker boxes there. Don't want to set your car on fire. Lovely copper smokers. Empire smokers here. I've got one of these, one of the very best that you can get, if not the best smoker that I've ever used. Again, you've got the Apisolis. I've got one of those. They are certainly a lot of fun. Cages for the smokers, plastic rhombus boards, metal rhombus boards, loads of hive tools and bee brushes down the bottom. Now I'm going to go out on a limb there and say that is quite a lot of honey wax candle moulds. Every single different shape and size that you can imagine. Really like these moulds. You can see they've even gone and brought some of the little wax moulds with them as well. The actual beeswax candles, really pretty and really good fun. So another thing I love about the Thorne store is they have every single different type of foundation that you can imagine. You'd be amazed at what this store is going to look like come 12 o'clock tomorrow. I bet you there's nothing left, but at the moment they've got pretty much every single sheet of foundation you can imagine. Whether it's thin, thick, wired, unwired, brood, worker, 14x12, national, commercial, Langstroth, Dadant, they've got every single one here. Now, one of the things I love about Thorne is they have some of these really beautiful roofs. Look at this one here, copper roof. You've got a nice garden, you want that beehive to look good, this is the kind of thing that you're looking for. WBC hive next to it, one of the classic Thorne designs, really, really good looking. In my view though, you can't beat a classic cedar WBC hive. It's an ultimate classic, really does look very, very good. Again, one of the things that I love about Thorne is they have a little bit of everything. If you want a top bar hive, if you want a WBC hive, they've got it here. Really, really do like the look of this top bar hive. Beautifully made, made of cedar. That would look good in anyone's garden. Again, there's always something a little bit new here. You've got a wax stainless steel press there. Good for pressing out wax, good for pressing out heather honey. Beautiful observation hive, extra floor at the bottom as well. Really, really good looking. You'll see here as well, wax conversion. Love it that Thorns bring that along. You can bring your cruddy wax in the bucket and they will convert it for any type of foundation that you want. So this one here looks like foundation, but these are actually wax candle sheets. Really good fun, great to do with the kids. Lots of different colours. You take your wick, you roll it up in a nice piece of coloured wax, and you've got yourself a candle. Now I can almost guarantee these 3 warming cabinets, they're not going to be here tomorrow. These will sell very quickly. If you've not seen these before, these are kind of like a low-cost version of a warming cabinet. It's got a thermostat on the front, very, very effective. And if you need to melt down your honey in the bucket, these are the perfect thing to use. So they've also brought along a number of pre-order Conaghan extractors. Really good quality. I love the way the legs are splayed on that one. Looks very, very secure. And then you can just see the woodwork behind. It really is my favorite smell in the whole world— freshly milled pine. And then behind that you've got freshly milled cedar. Shallow boxes, National Deeps. These are going to be on such a good price. And again, I don't think we'll see many of these left at the end of the day. So just going along, loads of flat pack roofs. You've got your crown boards in there as well. Open mesh floors, everything flat pack. They literally brought everything. And then the final little run here, we've got some more brushes, got some marking equipment, got some pens, got some entrance discs, some clearing boards, queen cages, and then some more labels as well. So as you can see, Thorn have brought literally everything they've got from their depots up to the Beekeeping Show. I'm gonna have a quick chat now with one of the directors, Rebecca. She's gonna talk to us about why she's excited for the Beekeeping Show and some of the best sellers on her stand.
Well, really excited to be here at the very first beekeeping show. We've got a lot of staff here this weekend. I think it's going to be a brilliant show. I think they've worked really hard to promote it. Lots of great people coming in from Europe and showing all the sort of big shiny honey processing things. As far as Thorns are concerned, I think probably one of the best sellers this weekend for us will probably be our budget range of hives. We've got budget WBCs, budget national hives, lots of different frame types and all the English cedar brood body supers, etc. We've also got a few new things I think people will like to see. We've got a bee lining box, which is made famous by Professor Tom Seeley from Cornell University, and we've got some gorgeous Canadian cedar painted hives that I hope people come and have a look at and hopefully take away.
So there we go, that's Thorn Beekeeping. If you enjoyed this video, give it a thumbs up, hit the subscribe button.
