Firstly let me apologise for missing last months blog. Just after Christmas but before New Year we started our biggest ever order and unfortunately were in the if it can go wrong it will go wrong stage. January has been our biggest ever month with over 102,000 jars filled!
I’ve had plenty of help, Misha our Bee Farmers Association Apprentice (left on the picture) has done a fantastic job and really put in the hours! Jane in the middle on the photo has also been fantastic she’s been busy as chief quality controller and mini jar pallet stacker! Mum (Christine) on the right has been amazing as ever, of course while this massive contract has been ongoing all of our regular contracts needed doing. She has worked incredibly hard managing our other filling room making sure all of our orders have gone out on time. There has also been plenty of other help, at times there have been 5 of us! Three on the automatic filling line and two next door on the semi automatic filler.
Our production line arrived in October and had been used for a few orders but never really tested to its full capacity. When we first started doing the little jars it was manic, settings were incorrect, pipes failed, even our air compressor packed up on a bank holiday weekend with no way to get a spare!
After the initial week of thinking no way is this possible (and everyone putting up with my growing frustration) we started to solve more problems that we gained thanks to the team who provided the production line. By the end of the first week in Jan we were seeing headway and it only got better. Our personal best was 1000 jars and hour for 3 hours straight.
A few years ago extracting in the utility at home there was no way I could have imagined being able to process that sort of number of jars and it’s really exciting for our future!
Outside of the honey we’ve had a few chances to check our bees. They’re looking really good with only a small percentage needing fondant which is basically cake fondant and gives the bees an emergency boost when their own stores are low.
There’s still a long way to go though with March and April the time bees are most at risk because they’ve started producing young who eat lots of food, before the flowers are out.
For your loved one this Valentines day why not give a heart of gold with our cute Heart Shaped Honey Jars. Full of our most popular summer honey that they’re sure to love!
As always thank you so much for your support reading our blog and buying our honey. As a very small but growing business we really appreciate it
If you ever have any questions about our bees or honey then email us on info@holthallapiary.co.uk and we will answer it in our blog
Thank you
Matthew Ingram