Happy New Year to you all !
It has been a bit quiet on the bee front during the last few months as there has been little activity from the hives. This is only to be expected however, we did see a few venturing out just before Christmas when we had that mild snap of weather.
I was asked by my local Women's Institute to do a talk this year on my beekeeping experience and I was happy to say yes, thinking it would be sometime in the summer. As this was a newly formed WI they were struggling for speakers so they asked if I could do the talk in January.
January!! oh goodness me, could I really go through with it so soon !!
Unaccustomed as I am to speaking in public, I set about writing myself some notes on bees so that I had all the information to hand should anyone ask me a question, ( my greatest fear, being asked something I didn't know the answer to). However my daughter got to hear what I was doing and told me not to be so boring!!
People don't want to sit there and listen to you spouting out a lot of boring facts, give them a summary of how you got involved with bees, she said and then take it from there.
So with her advice ringing in my ears and a few props to show them , off I set to the meeting. Surprisingly I was not nervous at this point as I thought I wouldn't be needed until half time, I would get a nice cup of tea and then I could prepare myself.
It didn't quite happen like that and I was called upon to do my talk within 30 minutes of arriving, no time to get nervous I was on!
I wont bore you with the details, but I can tell you that I had re-read all my blogs and used these snippets to tell my story, almost in the same format and it went down extremely well. With questions coming at me from all angles, I felt very proud to have been able to answer them all, thank goodness for my cribbing before hand.
During our tea break, (well earned I think) I was congratulated by everyone and thanked for telling my story, even the regional representative, wanted to put my name forward on the circuit to do talks.
So who knows I may be doing it again sometime in the future!!
