MEMBRLLO AND A SWARM OF BEES. A MOST UNLIKELY COMBINATION.

Two essentials I try to make in the autumn are chilli jam and membrillo.  I broadly follow Sarah Raven's recipes for them both. This weekend I made the membrillo

Membrillo is a fantastic way of using and saving quinces for use later in the year. It is Portuguese and is eaten with cheese. The other useful thing about it is if you want something to have the flavour of quince, which is something I adore personally, then you can add a chunk of membrillo. Add it to - say - a casserole and it will melt and infuse the dish with its flavour. This is how you make it:

* Take 2 kilos of quince, cored and chopped but with the skin still on.
* Add about a litre of water and simmer, stirring regularly, until the quince is soft. Make sure you add the water a bit at a time so that you do not end up with something too runny - basically you are looking for a puree type of consistency. The amount you need varies - I used over a litre this weekend.
* Then push the quince puree through a sieve.
* Measure out the puree into a heavy bottomed pan. I find a deep stock pot is the best thing to use (see why later). For every 600ml of quince puree you have add 350grams of sugar to the pan.
* Cook the sugar and quince mixture, stirring constantly, over a low heat for about an hour. This is a pain, but is essential as if you leave it it will quickly burn and stick to the bottom of the pan. Fish any burnt bits out if this happens. The paste will also spit as it thickens, which is why a stock pot is a good shape of pan to use, but you may also need to wrap your hand in a tea towel to protect yourself. While you are doing this add about half a teaspoonful of ground cinnamon to the mixture.
* After about 45 minutes to an hour the mixture will have thickened considerably and will have gone a reddish brown. What you are looking for is the point when it is thick enough to start pulling away from the sides of the pan as you are stirring it. This means it is ready for the next step.
* Ladel or pour the mixture into baking trays or moulds which you have oiled and then lined with non-stick paper or cling film. It looks like this (not very inviting):

* Cover it with a tea towel and leave it for about 2 days at room temperature to set. Then cut into slices and wrap them individually in cling film. I keep a couple of slices in the fridge and freeze the rest.

Quince also goes well with apples - quince and apple crumble or quince and apple cake work really well, and of course you can also make quince jelly, but for me membrillo is the way to use up my quinces.

And now for the swarm of bees......

This was a really surprising event. At about 4 pm yesterday Richard came into the house and said that one of our bee hives had a huge number of bees at its entrance; so many in fact that you could not see the entrance itself. We walked over to have a look. My initial thoughts were that they were under attack and were defending the hive from Asian hornets. However, when we got there they had dispersed and the hive looked absolutely normal, with a few bees flying in and out and not much else to remark on.

Had I seen this happen in the middle of the day and sometime between April and July I would have suspected that they had swarmed, but an October evening is theoretically too late for a swarm. In October the hive is starting to reduce in numbers and the bees (and bee keepers) are preparing for winter. Swarming is a process which normally happens early in the year, most usually because a hive gets too full. The swarm or swarms (there are usually several) leave the hive and set up colonies of their own at a time of year when there is lots of food and the weather is good, which gives them the maximum chance of survival. In October there is little available food so they have no chance of building up the supplies of honey they must have if they are to survive the winter.

Well. I was wrong - we looked at the hive for a few more minutes, hoping for clues, and then I became aware of a small swarm of bees, hanging from a branch close by. I was astonished. My initial thoughts were to leave them to their fate as I could not believe they would be able to survive, but I rang Bridget, our bee keeping guru, for advice. She was out and by 5.30 it was starting to drizzle. I did not have the heart to leave them to perish so I went into swarm collecting mode - cobbled together a nucleus box (small hive) and frames and abridged normal swarm collecting procedure by knocking the swarm into a bucket and putting them directly into the hive. The hive was about 10 metres from where the bees had been hanging - so it was close enough for any stragglers to sense where their queen had gone and within about 20 minutes they had followed her into their new home.

By now Bridget was home and had phoned me. She agreed with what I had done and said that she had once housed a swarm in November. Because she fed them with sugar syrup and candy thoughout the winter they survived into the spring and were a productive colony the following year. If the weather continued to be mild, and I fed them, my bees may also have a chance of survival.

This morning I made some sugar syrup for them and took it over to the hive, curious to see whether they still liked their new home. They were fine - a tiny colony, but already established on one of the combs of wax I had provided them with. I fed them and then left them to their own devices. I cannot believe that there are enough of them to survive the winter, but I will do my best to help them make it. Watch this space for news about whether they make it.