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Harvest 2024 over and out!

Well September has flown by! We’ve been busy getting our bees back down off the moors and sorting out our cut comb. 

Due to Heather beetle damage we’ve really struggled to produce as much Heather honey as we have done in previous years. The picture below (or right) is the trailer returning from the moors. At about 4am I headed up the M1 to our site near Sheffield. I had already strapped the hives so when I arrived I closed up the hives and loaded them on to the trailer. We can easily stack 30 hives on the trailer which is an ideal amount. I now always put a net over the trailer just in case there are any issues. 

I was back down from the moors with the bees and unloaded by 8:30am which was great. I must admit to having a slightly earlier finish that day as it’s always a tiring, but rewarding job.

Back with the bees that didn’t go up to the moors, all of them have been treated for Varroa Mite which is an invasive mite species that live on honey bees. We’ve been seeing quite a bit of varroa damage in our hives over the past month so we were please to get treatments on. 

We’ve also started feeding bees, the ones not strong enough to get through winter. They have a strong sugar syrup and will need a total of about 25kg of food to get through winter. 

Over the next few weeks we will continue feeding once a week and then we will go around and take the feeders off before the end of October.

I’m really excited to say our new branding is slowly being rolled out with cut comb having the new labels. Over the next month hopefully we will roll out a few more. I think the new branding really shows that we are a genuine producer that cares about our bees and of course how delicious our honey is!

Summer 2024 has been a great crop for us which is a massive relief after an awful spring. If you’re buying our runny honey it will be this seasons which is a fantastic light golden honey and probably one of my favourites for the past few years. The changing taste of honey because of what that season’s flowers and weather have provided is truly special. 

Thank you very much for reading our blog once again. Your support is so much appreciated 

Matthew Ingram
Holt Hall Apiary

 

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Summer Honey Harvesting

…and just like that summer is nearly over! Extraction is well underway and very nearly finished. 

The harvesting process has remained largely unchanged for a very long time. My Grandpa can remember his Grandpa spinning honey in the garage to the farmhouse. Now our equipment is much larger but the process is the same.

First we go out and put clearing boards on the hives, they’re kind of line one way valves, the bees leave the supers and can’t get back in. The next day we go and collect the supers which are stacked on pallets. 

When we get back we forklift them in to the honey room and begin extracting. The part of the process is to remove the wax cappings. Historically that was done with a knife but due to the number of frames we have we now have a machine that has serrated knives that go back and forth as the frame is pushed between them. 

Next the uncapped frame goes in to the extractor where it spins for about 8 minutes sometimes more and times less depending on the consistency of the honey. 

The honey drains out and it goes into a tank where it settles overnight to allow the beeswax to float up and mean only a small amount of straining is required to make it ready for jarring. 

The wax from the cappings goes through a press to make sure any remaining honey is collected and the wax is rendered down and traded in for something called foundation which is used to fill our new frames. 

We’ve been busy jarring honey as well as extracting it this month. Since our expansion back in May we have two separate rooms for extraction and bottling as extraction makes such a mess with beeswax everywhere!

Since January we have bottled over 40 ton of honey which is considerably more than last year and a real sign of our small business growing. We have already got plans for our next phase of expansion due to happen in early Jan 2025 with a new warehouse area being renovated to allow us to store hopefully upward of 200 pallets. Storage has become the largest bottle neck as we’ve taken on more and more own label customers that all have their own bottles, honey, labels etc and we need somewhere to store the.

I’m really happy to say that our brand has had a bit of change which you’ll have already noticed. We decided that our brand hadn’t had anything done to it for years and maybe it was time we started to do a bit more with it. I’m really happy to say our online sales have gone well so I want to thank you all for that.

Our 3 jar pack still remains our best seller along with the 1KG jars of our delicious runny honey. Our Runny honey 227g is already the new season honey and the 1kg will be moving to new season honey in about 2 weeks.

Thank you so much for reading our blog, your support is so much appreciated. As a small business your support sharing our social media content and buying our honey online or through our fantastic stockists. 
This Saturday the 7th we are at Planters Garden Centre for the Open Air Country Fair please do come along and support lots of great small businesses

Thank you
Matthew Ingram
Holt Hall Apiary

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Finally some sunshine

Well what a difference a month makes! This time a few weeks ago most bee farmers around the UK were worrying that the weather was never going to pick up and it was going to be one of the worst summer harvests in a long time. The continual rain and cold was making everything behind, you can really see that with other insect life. There hasn’t been many butterflies, bumble bees or even wasps (we’re glad about that one!) yet this year which really shows the impact of the terrible spring. 

Anyhow… the sun is shining now and the bees have produced what looks to be a reasonable crop of honey in the past couple of weeks but only time will tell really! 

Just this morning (31st July) I took my first drive up to the Heather moors to assess how far off flowering they are and get the site (called a heather stance traditionally) sorted. 

I was pleased to find the heather just in bud but not yet open, the photo above or left is of the most forward section. Our bees will be moved in the early hours of Monday morning before the they are out flying. Hopefully they will be super productive as Cut Comb is one of our best sellers and currently out of stock. I’ve got my fingers crossed!

Back in the honey room its been a busy month preparing for our annual SALSA audit which always comes at our busiest time. I’m very happy to say all of our prep paid off and we had everything ready for a very successful audit resulting in just one minor action point and no improvements which is our best audit thus far. 

Sticking with auditing today we have also had a visit by the soil association to do an Organic Audit as one of our packing customers purchases organic honey from Spain.

I must say when I started with a few hives 7 years ago I didn’t expect it to turn in to my job let alone in to a growing business processing honey from all around the World. 

I should also mention that to keep up with demand Shara has recently joined us to help with order packing and Doug started just this week to help with the processing side of the business. A very exciting time indeed!!

Many of you will have noticed we are doing far fewer markets than before. Unfortunatley we are struggling to make them work along side a busy Monday – Friday of beekeeping and processing and beekeeping experience every couple of weekends. 

I’m very lucky that my Mum, Christine who most of you will know has been out at a couple of events and we will be out this weekend at Staunton Harold Artisan Market which was a great event last year with some very high quality traders. If you are around it’s well worth a visit if for nothing else but a beautiful setting. 

You can of course always buy online or though many of great stockists which can all be found – HERE

Thank you all for reading, next time i’ll make sure we have plenty of photos of the bees on the Heather as that is always beautiful. If you ever have any beekeeping questions then drop me an email at info@holthallapiary.co.uk and I will make sure it’s answered in our blog!

Thank you
Matthew Ingram

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July Already!

Well… Firstly I need to apologise, where did the June 1st blog go… well I totally forgot! I’ve been writing this blog for at least the past 5 years and I’ve never totally missed a month, I’ve been late once or twice but never totally missed a month. So, sorry about that! 

Any how on to our month. For at least the first half of the month things were looking awful. Beekeepers often talk about a June gap where the spring flowers have gone over and the summer flowers aren’t ready yet. Well this year because of the awful wet weather it seemed like the June gap would never end. We even had to feed our bees to keep them alive which isn’t something we normally need to do in June. 

Tides turned around the 3rd week in June though with the hot weather starting and the bees were pouring nectar in! Hives that had been close to starving if they weren’t being managed were full to bursting within a few days and we then had to rush around putting supers on. 

Although it’s gone a bit cooler now the bees are still working well and bringing in more honey than they up until now. 

The warm weather coincided with our second beginners course of the year which was a great success, but very warm in the suits. Luckily we had air conditioning in the class room which just about managed to keep it cool enough.

You can tell I’m happy with the honey that’s come in from the photo (right or below) with my cheesy grin!

The site above/ left is one of our favourite sites. It has done well for the past two years and as you can tell from how stacked up the boxes are it’s still doing well now! 

We’ve also been busy making more hives to make sure we have plenty for producing honey next year as well because demand for our honey is certainly on the rise, Thank you!

Our most popular honey online is the 1kg jar which for the first time ever we had to put out of stock while we caught up with jarring. They’re back in stock now though!

For those of you with beekeeping experience vouchers, now’s the time to book on. We have good availability in August so find your timeslot now – here 

Over the next month we will be busy jarring honey as we always are and getting our bees ready for the move to the heather in early August. It’s always something I look forward to even with the extra work getting the hives up to the peak district! I really can’t believe how quickly this year is going!

 

Thank you as always for reading and supporting!

Matthew Ingram
Holt Hall Apiary

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Finally some Sun.. Just about!

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

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RAIN RAIN GO AWAY!! – April 2024

Well March has flown by and been extremely busy as normal! We are all amazed how quickly the Oil seed rape has come out and because of the awful wet weather we have only managed one move so far. To get the 20 hives on to their new spring site involved getting bogged down 3 times and having to be towed. You can see from the photos just how wet it is on the fields. Unfortunately we’ve had to delay moving any more hives for a week or two in the hope it dries up.

Our other worry with the OSR being in flower so early is that it will go over while it’s too cold for the bees to make use of which would be a real shame. We use honey from Oil Seed Rape to make most of our infusions so we like plenty of it! 

While we are talking about other honeys I thought I would just mention our Borage honey. It’s an amazing honey that is incredibly light but with a very strong floral flavour. It isn’t a honey we can produce ourselves as we don’t have access to acres of Borage fields but when a bee farming friend, Neil, asked if we would like to try some I jumped at the chance to be able to offer this really special honey to our customers from a beekeeper who I know I can trust to provide a high quality honey that has been cared for as much as we care for our own honeys. 

We are seeing more an more people hearing about the (probable) adulteration of honeys in the supermarket and trying to find Raw honey as natural as possible. I just wanted to assure all of our customers that although we don’t label our honey as raw it is totally unpasteurised and has only been lightly warmed and passed through a sieve to remove any bits of beeswax.

The image in the header is of a cut out we did during the month. A farmer called us saying a tree had fallen down and could we come and save the bees which were exposed to the elements. We went along and got them in a hive. There’s a brief video of the process on our social media if you’re interested

Construction work has started yet again here at Holt Hall Apiary, we are busy making honey room number 3!

We’ve taken an old wall out and the levelling has been done ready to create a new room just a few metres from our current room. We have run out of space to extract our honey during the season because we’re so busy jarring honey all year around. I’m going to share photos of the whole process next month when hopefully it is nearly done! For now here’s two showing the lean-to and old brick wall being taken out and the new opening being levelled!

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Thank you so much as ever for reading, it’s very exciting times here at HHA. Please do follow us on social media if you don’t already to see more regular updates. Also thank you for the continued orders both through us and our stockists. It really does mean a lot to me and our tiny team!

If you want to ready any of our older blogs you may have missed take a look below.

Thank you again
Matthew Ingram

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Spring is finally in the air!

We’ve had a great month getting back to normal. We’ve been busy jarring lots of honey as well as checking on our bees. 

We even had our first Live stream on TIKTOK after Katie joined our small team to help with marketing. The live stream was really successful with lots of people joining to see us cutting comb and making chunk honey. We are planning to do lots more so if you have TIKTOK do give us a follow!

If there’s anything you’d like to know or learn about honey or beekeeping just message us or email us and we will make sure it gets answered. 

One of the big developments this month was the arrival of our new bulk tank. When honey comes to us in barrels for our packing customers we need to warm it up. Up until now we have warmed it in the barrels and then pumped it through a strainer and in to the jarring machine. The problem is you need to try and mix the honey to get it to clear well enough.

Now with this new tank we warm the barrels slightly just enough to get it to be able to pump and then pump it in to the tank which has a water tank around it (Called a double jacket) which heats up. A stirrer mixes the 800kg of honey once an hour for 5 minutes for about 24 hours which then means the honey is clear enough to be strained and jarred with much less warming which is better for the honey. 

We can jar about 1 ton of honey a day so this tank is going to be a big leap forward for us. Although at the moment our own brand isn’t actually big enough to make full use of this tank our packing customers are and it means when our brand grows we will have the equipment set up ready to go. 

We have lots more plans moving forward including a new processing room so keep an eye out on our social media for all the updates!

Out with the bees we’ve been busy making sure they have enough food. So far we’ve been happy with how the bees are doing. The warmer than normal winter has meant the queens have continued laying and the bees are eating a lot of food. I have heard reports higher than normal losses around the UK which will be due to the bees running out of food. Every two weeks we go around and add fondant, which is bakers fondant often used in cakes, to any hives that need it. 

Over the next few weeks we will do a little video showing the process and how we decide which ones need food.

As always thank you so much for taking the time to read our short blog, your support means a lot to our small business

Matthew Ingram
Holt Hall Apiary

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January – Our busiest month ever!!

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

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November and Winter is Certainly Here!

Well I’m sat writing this looking out on the hardest frost we’ve had so far this winter. I think as beekeepers our years go quickly because we spend half the the year waiting for winter so we can (hopefully) slow down a little and take a break and then we spend the winter waiting for spring so we can get back out and about checking our bees!

At this time of year very few checks are necessary on the hives themselves. In a couple of weeks, probably just after Christmas we will go around with fondant which is almost solid sugar to give them a boost!

November started off very nicely with an awards evening for Stafford and Birmingham Agricultural Society where I was honoured to win the Young Entrepreneur of the year award for a farm Diversification Business.

We have took the decision to stop attending Market Bosworth Farmers Market a couple of months ago and as part of reducing our markets we haven’t done as many Christmas events either. We attended Staunton Harrold Christmas Market which was absolutely beautiful and considering it was November, surprisingly warm. We only have two events left, an open night at Blabers Hall on the 1st December and 2 days at the Gift Shop at Pinwall which is a beautiful Christmas shop!

Many of you who have seen us at markets before will likely recognise my Mum, Christine who has been busy making gift sets of our Mini Jars, pouring all of the candles and manning the stalls!

 

Before I started bee farming and realising the scale of honey production I couldn’t really imagine honey in anything other than a jar, after the first year we were filling buckets and that seemed like bulk. Now we do more and more packing for larger brands that use their own honey or buy it in from others we get the privilege of seeing honey from all around the UK. 

It also means we can show you what bulk honey in the UK comes in. These 5 barrels, two on the pickup and 3 on the trailer each hold 300kg of honey, that’s over 1,300 of our size jar in each barrel! These were collected from a local bee farmer for a large customer of ours and will be packed into their own branded jars. We have a special attachment on the forklift that grabs the barrels so we can lift them on to pallets making them easier to move around the honey room. They will be gently warmed before being pumped into the jarring tank. A nice easy process that doesn’t involve the same heavy lifting that tipping buckets does!  

As always thank you for reading our blog, don’t forget we’ve got our Bee Merry (Honey infused with a mixed spice that tastes just like mince pies!!) and our Christmas Hampers too! Last post for Christmas is the 18th December so please get your orders in nice and early, your support is always very much appreciated! 

Thank you
Matthew Ingram

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Out and about in October

October has been very much a typical autumn month for us here. We’ve been busy getting the bees sorted for winter and spending an increasing amount of time in the honey room. It’s also been a chance to take a little bit of time off ahead of what we are expecting to be our busiest November and December thus far.

We started the month by visiting Chain Bridge Honey Farm just outside Berwick-Upon-Tweed. This was for the Bee Farmers Association AGM, it’s one event I never miss out on. The Tuesday afternoon we made the 4-hour drive north before meeting up with about 50 members for a meal, it’s always great to chat as it’s often the only time of year that you see others in our small industry. 

On the Wednesday we headed to Chain Bridge which is a fantastic bee farm with lots of History, they are open to the public as a tourist attraction and have amassed a collection of vehicles, cars, memorabilia from the last 70 years or so. As well as the museum you can of course see the honey room and buy lots of honey and cosmetics they make on site. They have around 1,200 hives and stock around 400 stores so it’s a fantastic opportunity for us to have a walk around and get some ideas, you almost always come back with at least one good idea from these AGMs. 

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Back with the bees we’ve been busy feeding, the hives are now finally up to weight but it’s taken longer than it has the past few years. This week the feeders are coming off and mouseguards (metal strips to stop mice getting in to the hives) are going on, especially needed as we’ve already found a few nests between the inner and outer rooves of hives. Once that’s done, we can leave them alone for a few weeks, checking once between now and Christmas to make sure they have enough food. We are taking in to winter about 160 hives with the plan to make a small increase next year to around 200. 

In the honey room our new processing line is busy at work producing more than ever, we’ve been very lucky to sign a few new big contracts so that is going to be very busy for us now. We’ve also started Bee Merry our festive spiced honey that is always so popular, and I know why… it really is delicious, just think Christmas in a jar!

We’ve only got one Market this month, Staunton Harold Winter Fayre. I think this will be one of the nicest winter shows around with an absolutely stunning venue. It runs from the 9th to the 12th November. We will have vouchers for our beekeeping experiences which have been limited this year so please book early to avoid missing out. We will also have our Christmas Hampers and little gift sets too!

 

Thank you as always for reading
Matthew Ingram

Remember if you join our hive below you get 10% off your first order and 10% off a honey of the month each month