Hurrah for Heather Honey
Well it’s October and the end of the season is certainly upon us. Looking back at the summer and the poor weather it isn’t surprising that we’ve had a disappointing summer crop. Some bee farmers locally saying it’s their worst season since 2012. For us the spring crop taken in June was rather good, at least as good as last year. The summer crop is where things went downhill, probably only about 50% of last year, that’s the problem with such a weather dependent crop. We are really lucky to have a group of fantastic local beekeepers we can call upon for extra honey when we need it.
The photo (right, or below on mobile) was mid September taking off our Heather honey crop. The heather has been the saving grace of the season and was much better than we could have hoped based on the weather.
From the Heather we get – Cut Comb which is always super popular, the Chunk Honey which, if you’ve not tried cut comb before is the ideal way to try it, and Heather Honey Jars.
Each one is absolutely delicious and many of you reading regularly will know Heather is one of my favourite honeys.
We’ve also been busy moving our bees to their winter sites. Most bees are back where they need to be and feeding is well underway. Most colonies are putting on weight nicely but wasps have been playing havoc and some sites are looking slightly behind. Over the next few weeks we will get the rest of their food on and the hives will be back on track!
So the massive news of September has been the arrival of our new production line. Over the past 12 months our honey packing business has been getting busier and busier. We now process for a considerable amount of other honey businesses with much larger volumes than our own.
Over the past few years we have been using semi-automatic machines which still required considerable manual handling. With all of our hives and the packing work inside something had to change and about 3 months ago we started working with a company to piece together a production line that would help increase our capacity.
Our new production line arrived in the first week of September, I’ve never open a crate so fast in my life, it was like Christmas. Over the next few weeks we started setting the line up before we started to put some small volumes through it. It’s fair to say there have been many… many snags and certainly some frustrating days.
However the company we purchased the line from was fantastic and have always managed to solve the problems within 24 hours. I’m happy to say that now the line is working fantastically, we will be running the line at full capacity in the next couple of weeks. We’re expecting to be able to process at up to about 800 jars and hour!
I’ve learnt a massive amount over the last month and it’s so exciting to see the business moving forward.
This month we don’t have any farmers markets or shows however if you want to buy from us you still can by purchasing online or supporting one of our brilliant stockists and buying through them.
Thank you all for reading and supporting
Matthew Ingram
Holt Hall Apiary