September – Autumn already!
As ever August has proved to be a busy month with harvest in full swing! I’m happy to say that the last of our honey was harvested on the 30th August apart from our Heather honey that will be in a few weeks!
The crop has ended up being fairly average due to the dry weather but it’s our biggest crop to date as we have more hives than we ever have done before!
August has also seen the end of experiences, we’ve run over 50 courses this year so as much as I love meeting new people and showing off the wonders of beekeeping I was ready to have a small break! On the experiences note – after almost 4 seasons doing experiences we have decided not to offer any more for sale for 2023. As we have got busier and busier we are having to pick and choose areas of the business to expand and other to contract. For those with a voucher don’t worry we will still honour any outstanding vouchers during 2023! Hopefully we will be able to bring them back in the not too distant future.
The Heather Move!
One of the most stressful yet fantastically rewarding parts of the season comes in the form of moving 28 (10 more than last year) hives on a trailer up the M1 to the peak district!
The process takes a couple of days to get the hives in the correct configuration with plenty of food and strapped ready to be moved.
On the moving day we start early, about 4:30am and go and close all of the entrances up before carefully loading the hives onto the trailer, we can stack the hives 2 high, we might be able to go 3 high but i’m not that brave just yet!!
A net goes over the hives just to make sure if we were to break down and the entrances came open the bees would be confined to the trailer but importantly it allows for good ventilation which the bees need.
When we reached our destination (traditionally called a Heather Stance)we placed the pallets down before we started to unload the hives and open the entrances.
Helping me this year was Will who had never done any beekeeping before so thrown in the deep end would be an understatement!
The move went well and we returned home a little over 5 hours after we set off.
Hopefully next time I will be able to tell you about the harvest of our heather honey which should be around mid September so look out for our Chunk, Comb and Heather for sale again soon!
I couldn’t not mention our very exciting news this month! Winning our very first Great Taste Award for our runny honey!
Thank you as ever for reading our blog, your support and feedback is always very much appreciated.
Our markets this month are:
Open Air Country Fair – Planters garden Centre, 3rd & 4th September
Fillongley Show – 17th September
Middleton Hall Autumn Market – 24th & 25th September
Market Bosworth Farmers Market – 25th September
We look forward to seeing you at one of our markets
Matthew Ingram