
Well…firstly the keen readers will have noticed that it’s not the 1st May but instead the 3rd… I may… possibility… have forgotten about the blog this month! What can I say, there’s a first for everything!
It’s been a busy month with construction of honey room 3.0 under way and the bees finally moved out to Oil Seed Rape sites. Despite the flowers being out for well over a month now the bees have been having a hard time foraging. The weather has been so cold and wet that the National Bee Unit (DEFRA) has issued a starvation warning to beekeepers which means they are seeing colonies dying of starvation and the beekeeper should check their hives and feed asap if required.
Over the past week though we have finally seen an improvement in the weather, not a vast improvement but at least heading in the right direction

On the hives doing better we have been adding supers, the boxes the bees use to store the honey that we will eventually (hopefully) harvest. The boxes to the right are two of the fantastic boxes we had painted during COVID. Whenever I see these boxes going out they make me smile, thinking of all the families and schools that had great fun decorating their beehives.
As far as I know all of the boxes that were painted are still in circulation which is fantastic and add some real colour to our hives.
Just last week myself and Misha attended a zoom meeting to join a Knowledge Exchange Group (KEG) with the Bee Farmers Association. We will be part of this scheme for a few years with the aim of sharing data between our group and improving our honey production businesses which all vary greatly. I think it’s going to be a really interesting group to be a part of and hopefully will help to grow our business.
Talking of business growth, our honey room expansion has been going well. The room is very nearly finished with the plumbers finishing up this week.
Then its just lots of cleaning and paperwork and we are ready to go! The new room is going to be used for extracting honey from the comb as well as having a room for the production of our infused honeys which includes hot honey (like sweet chilli sauce) which we produce for a number of brands.

Next month I will have a complete series of photos showing the transformation of our new honey room and possibly even some photos of it in use! For those wanting to come and meet us and our bees we have one market this month which is at Planter Garden Centre on the 4th and 5th May 10am – 3pm .
As always that you so much for reading our blog and supporting our small business!
Matthew Ingram