Could it be that March has brought us some Spring weather? Following a stormy, wet weekend there finally seems to be a glimmer of sunshine, and about time too. Bunnies, bees and chickens around the UK will be happy again and hopefully you've got a spring in your step too. So here's the latest newsletter to make your Monday even sunnier!

Bake Me Happy

Although Winter's been difficult to budge, your chickens should be back in the swing of laying eggs again by now, so what better time than this to launch this year's Bake Me Happy competition!? With all those lovely, fresh eggs to make use of you can bake to your heart's content and trial your favourite recipes. Send us a photo of your victorious victoria sponges, devilishly delicious brownies, crowd pleasing carrot cakes and anything else you can come up with and we will award prizes for the best. Email your photos to stephanie@omlet.co.uk by Monday 22nd March. Go on, bake us happy!

 

Princess Pancake

Homes everywhere were filled with the fun of flipping pancakes last week and we even enjoyed one or two at Omlet HQ. You sent us some great photos of your skills and we know you're all keen to find out who has been crowned the winner of the 2010 pancake competition. Well, you'll probably recognise the photo because we featured it in the last newsletter too – it's that good! Princess Pancake 2010 is Ligia Wallace...because, quite frankly, for a first attempt it is flipping fantastic! Well done!

There were a few other prize winners too. Kim won the Link-a-bord set and the three lucky recipients of the Heart Cutter Sets were Emma, Gemma and Anne. If you're feeling left out then enter the Bake me Happy competition. No flipping required although it's always nice to see a face in the photo.

Facebook

Are you a Facebook fanatic? Do you love to know the latest news from Omlet? We are very eggcited to announce that we now have an official fan page on the number 1 networking site...and you can join it. Become a fan of our new page and be the first to know what's happening at Omlet. Hear about new products, find out about the shows and give us your comments. Or just use it as a way of meeting and chatting to other Eglu fans.

First Twitter, now Facebook, whatever next?

It's got Style!

You may have spotted the Beehaus in the Style Magazine recently. There was a fabulous feature on some of the best design pieces of the year that are being exhibited at the Design Museum in London. Style mag called the Beehaus a 'cheery new urban beehive' which 'offers hope to the poor old British bee'.

There is a very exciting reason for the Beehaus being on show in London at the moment – it has been nominated for the Brit Insurance Design of the Year award. It is one of around 100 projects which have been selected by design experts as one of the most innovative and forward-thinking designs from around the world. There are seven categories of design and the Beehaus is in the Product category. There will be one winner chosen by an international jury from each category on March 4th and the overall winner will bee announced at a special awards dinner on March 16th.

The exhibition is now open to the public at the Design Museum and you have until June to go and see some spectacular and stylish designs. Click here for more information. Also, news just in the Co-op are sponsoring an initiative to boost urban beekeeping and they're giving away free kit, including courses and even the Beehaus itself. Click here to read the story.

Rugby Update

Following our mention of rugby players that keep chickens in the last newsletter, we received an email from Anne Gibbons.

“I love getting the newsletter and as we were cheering on a game as I read it my husband decided to get in a scrum with two of our girls. Monica the silky, who is broody yet again, didn’t want to play to full time. Emily the Polish as usual couldn’t see much of what was going on but is always game. Unfortunately we only have five girls now so he can’t get a team of 7.”

 

Money Saving Eggspert

After opening the search for Omlet's first Money Saving Eggspert we can finally reveal that we have chosen someone for the job. We were sent some terrific top tips and our eggheads deliberated for weeks but the eggspert we have selected is full of loads of advice that will help you through the year. You can read the top tips for this month later in the newsletter and we hope you enjoy it!

 

Shows

It won't be long before the Omlet tour bus is dusted off once again for another season of superb shows. This year we will be eggsibiting at more shows than ever before, ranging from stylish events to the more country bumpkin affair, and we may be coming to an area near you. If you are thinking about keeping bees or chickens it is a great chance to see our products face to face and have a chat. Or, if you already have an Eglu or Beehaus and you want to get a slice of the action we are looking for eggsperts to help us.

You can see the next few shows we will be at by clicking here and if you think you'd like to help at any of them just email quin@omlet.co.uk. It is paid work and a lot of fun!

 

The Omlet Team

 

Hi, my name is Miss Money Penny and I am delighted to join the Omlet team as your Money Saving Eggspert! The recession may be officially over but that is no reason not to make savings on every day expenses, so here are my top three tips for this month to help you save the pennies. Enjoy!

It’s still cold outside so whilst you may not be able to turn off the heating just yet you can save money on fragrancing your home. Just put a drop of essential oil on a cotton ball and rub it over the top of the radiator. As the radiator heats up it will release the fragrance. Why not try using lavender for a calming effect in the bedroom or rosemary for the study? Don’t throw the cotton ball away either – pop it in your vacuum and as you clean it will release the fragrance as you go!

Don't use harmful cleaners on tough stains which leave you coughing. Using a paste of vinegar and bicarbonate of soda on the oven works magic; mix it up, paste it on, leave for an hour, then wipe off and voila. Vinegar also works wonders on lime scale, soak kitchen towel with vinegar, wrap around taps, leave for an hour or so and lime scale will just chip off.

Never buy containers for growing plants. Save those plastic trays that fruit comes in as they are ideal seed trays and are deeper to give the roots more room. Yoghurt pots, wine crates, old wellies, wheel barrows, olive oil cans and anything else that will hold soil and you can put drainage holes in make good and interesting containers.

Although it certainly hasn’t felt like it lately Spring is just around the corner. Sadly, my garden is looking rather dull and boring after the Winter’s taken it’s toll. It’s at this time of year that my mind turns to buying flowering plants.

I love filling any available space with pretty and bright flowers which cheer up any dull day. As I’m always thinking about my allotment I try to buy flowers with pollinating insects in mind, especially our native bees that do a great job of buzzing in and out of my veggies coating themselves in the pollen from the blossoms and spreading it around. If I can get beautiful, fragrant flowers that attract bees then I’m very happy.

It doesn’t really matter if your garden has a certain style, you can always find flowers to fit in. I like to look for a variety of flowering annuals (only flower once) and perennials (flower yearly) they have to be brightly coloured (purple, yellow and white are favourites) and ideally scented as these are the two things bees adore.

It’s best to have a wide variety of flowers, there are various reasons for this. Firstly, get a selection that flower at different times of the year. This means that your garden is never without colour and the bees will always be able to feed in your garden. Secondly, get flowers of different shapes. Having some flowers that are flat and open like daisies or sunflowers, some that are tubular like foxgloves and some that are multi - petalled like roses. Different varieties of bees have different tongue lengths, so by having different flowers in your garden it will encourage a variety of bees. Thirdly, colour. Get a variety of shades and

Where and with who do you live? I live near Clevedon, North Somerset on small smallholding with my wife Heather. Our children grew up here and have now left home so we run the place as a small B&B. My background is electronics and computer design and Heather used to be a Design and Technology teacher.

How long have you been keeping bees? Since soon after we moved here, so it's about 20 years.

What made you decide to keep bees? That is a long story. Briefly when we bought this place it was at the worst time possible as it coincided with the last major housing crash in 88/89. We couldn't sell our other house and the bank manager had no real advice other than keep bees! I had always been interested in bees as I thought you could get lots of honey for doing nothing! How wrong I was!

How many beehives do you have? Currently 8 but it fluctuates. This year I am planning on going into double figures, as well as raising a lot of colonies for sale to new beekeepers.

What plants in your garden do your bees like most? Fruit blossom (we have an orchard), rudbeckia, dandelion and clover. They adore poached egg plant when it flowers in the Spring.

What's your favourite thing about the Beehaus? The ability to try a large colony space. I normally use Nationals which of course are limited in available internal space for colonies. Other members of our branch use Deep National or Commercial and I know what they achieve so I can't wait to see how the Beehaus performs this year.

What do you like doing when you're not hosting beekeeping courses? Preparing courses! It takes a lot of work to produce a good course and course material. Also I am a tutor for BBKA correspondance courses and help teach at our Branch courses at a local college. Outside of beekeeping I have the smallholding work and general maintenance for B&B. We have won a lot of Eco / Green Awards for the B&B and were awarded South West Micro Business of the year in 2008 in the C+ Carbon Positive Awards. We aim to be as self sufficent as reasonably as possible.

What I like to do when I have the time is model engineering and would love to make a steam locomotive to run round the garden!

How long have you been running bee courses? I have been running the courses with Omlet since the beginning of the year. I have been involved with Branch (Blagdon, Clevedon and District Branch of Avon Beekeepers) teaching and training events for many years.

What made you decide to teach others about beekeeping? I was fortunate enough to be taught and mentored by an old time beekeeper. He died last year aged 94 and it's lovely to be able to pass on the wonderful skills he taught me. I found out that Omlet were promoting courses and called to see if I could help. The upshot was that Omlet market the courses and do the administration and I run them locally. I must say that so far the bulk of people coming have been through our local contacts and local PR, although we have had people coming from as far as Malvern and Woking through seeing it on the Omlet site.

What do your courses include? A lot! So far I have run two types of course. The first is a Taster Session. This is aimed at telling people what is involved in beekeeping, the duties and responsibilities of beekeepers, the nature of a colony and the risks and hazards. In an afternoon you cannot cover everything so this gives people a good flavour, warts and all. Afterwards they say, "I didn't know all this was involved in beekeeping. I thought all you did was put a hive in a garden". This is good, because it shows they are starting to realise you must know what you are doing.

This leads on to the other course which is for those who have decided to get bees. In this course I go into more depth and emphasise the importance of practical training and belonging to a local beekeeping association. At the end of the session they have an action plan to help them get started.

Once the bees start flying the courses will also include practical hands on colony management and inspection of hives in my apiary.

In all the courses I emphasise the importance of training, either with me or elsewhere. I make sure they have good quality handouts with colour photographs to take away for reference. These are expensive to produce but are worth it. Finally, people can contact me if they have any subsequent questions or require mentoring.

What's the best thing about being a course host? Its fun to meet lots of people and knowing I have made a positive impact on their beekeeping future.

Why should people attend a course? There's a lot of interest in bees at the moment and people want to know. If you want to keep bees and take these lovely and fascinating little lives in your hands you have a social responsibility to look after them properly. You won't learn it all in a single session but I put in the foundations and basic knowledge to help everyone take it further and to know the next step. Beekeeping is not a textbook art, it needs to be learned from an experienced beekeeper. This is not the kind of experience that is learned in one season.

Example Review: “Stephen's course was excellent - well presented, with a clear passion and depth of knowledge. In addition to the presentation of information (with superb handouts/materials), being able to look at and handle some equipment was extremely useful for me (having read much about beekeeping, but not as yet having the opportunity to start beekeeping). The course enthused me more and I can't wait for the spring...” by Martin Callow

Upcoming Courses:

Beekeeper Taster Course

Sat, 6th March, 2:00pm - 4:30pm, Clevedon, North Somerset Click here to book now

Beekeeping Getting started Course

Sun, 7th March, 2:00pm - 5:00pm, Clevedon, North Somerset Click here to book now

Stephen has recently appeared in two local papers for his beehaus parties. You can read the article from the Weston Mercury by clicking here.

 

Egg Cosy Cottage

As seen on Eggness Deyn and Carmen Eleggtra, this is the latest must have eggsessory for free rangers. And it's not hard to see why - it's the perfect all rounder for keeping eggs warm and looking fabulous. The pretty, pistachio, polka dot fabric with pink trim suits every type and eggs will look just the part on the country kitchen catwalk!

Buy now for £2.35

Bag Mini Canvas Bird Song

Why would anyone choose to carry around unattractive plastic bags when there are much better looking alternatives available? Not only is it better for the environment to take your own bags with you when you go shopping, but you will look far more stylish. (As if any woman needs an eggscuse to buy a bag anyway...)

This canvas shopping bag is just the right size for picking up a few essentials and it is much stronger and sturdier than a plastic bag. Measuring 25 x 25cm it is also an ideal size for taking lunch or books to work or school.

Oh, and let's not forget the delightful design that makes this bag even more desirable. Nature lovers will adore the charming print of garden birds with eggs. With blackbirds, robins and sparrows galore you might find yourself tweeting and chirping all the way to the supermarket.

Buy now for £9.99