Category: Beekeeping

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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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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

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Autumn… already!! :(

During the first week in August we moved 30 hives up to the heather moors in our normal spot and after a shocking summer of awful weather we’ve been so happy to see some honey being produced, a real saving grace for our season and excitingly it mean our new Cut comb and Chunk are now back in stock.

The move generally went well, starting at 4am on a cool August morning, all the hives were loaded up and a net thrown over the trailer, we strapped the hives down well and set off on our hour and a half journey north. As soon as we arrived we sprung  to action and within 20 minutes the hives were sat on their pallets and their lids has been replaced. They weren’t in a great mood so there was a few stings had but Misha and Myself but that’s just an occupational hazard! 

Our 2023 SALSA Audit

Our SALSA audit was actually in July but we’ve kept it quiet until our certificate was finally released! I’m very proud to say that we have again passed this rigorous food safety certification. 

It started at 9am with our auditor arrived on site and we started to go through how the day would progress. 

We had our first hour checking through our HACCP (basically a large risk assessment of our processing and facility) 

Then we went up to our honey room and our auditor looked around our facility before having an hour watching us jar honey and extract honey. This part makes me nervous but we stick to how our paperwork says we process and deal with any issues how we are supposed to and all is fine! 

After that we went through a section called prerequisites this is the bulk of the audit and covers all our policies, procedures and records for everything from cleaning, to allergens and of course traceability which is a massive part of a good food safety system. 

I’m glad to say we passed with only a few minor improvements before next year. We did have one action which was to have our scale calibration weights re-calibrated which needed to be done within a month. So a month on and we have our certificate, a lot of hard behind the scenes work but well worth it for us!

This month also saw the completion of our baseline audit for DASH a disease accreditation run by DEFRA which trains beekeepers to manage their own disease and standstill notices. We had the training back in May as many will remember but we have been waiting on our audit to be completed until we were happy to say we had passed our DASH course.

Ben and Guy came out from the National Bee Unit to complete our last few hives that hadn’t already been checked earlier in the year.

A great success which will lead to less frequent checks by the NBU on our bees,  I’m always happy for time saved!

Next month we will chat about a super exciting new bit of equipment we have arriving in the next few days which is going to completely revolutionise our production. Also we will give you an update on our summer crop or at least what little there is of it!

We have decided not to continue with Market Bosworth Farmers Market, it has been a tricky market recently and  although it is a market we love to be part of it isn’t really economically viable anymore for us.

We are at Planters Open Air Country Fair over the first weekend and at Huddlesford Heritage Gathering on the 23 and 24th September

 

Thank you for all of your support

Matthew 

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June – First Harvest Completed!

When I think back to writing last months blog it seems ages ago… and yet it’s still flown by and I’m sat the night before it’s due trying to remember everything we’ve done this month!

The main excitement during June has been the successful spring harvest.

I was a bit worried in May that we weren’t going to get much of a spring crop but then the warm weather hit and the bees did exactly what they’ve evolved to do, make honey! 

We managed to extract from all our our hives during one week at the start of June. The process starts on Monday putting empty supers (boxes that hold the honey combs the bees fill) on to hives with a device called a clearing board which is basically a one way valve for bees. 

The next day we turn up and remove the full supers now void of bees and stack them on to our trailer which can be a hot job in the sun stacking 10kg boxes for an hour! We then head back to the farm and unload the pallet of supers to extract

The process of getting the honey out of the comb is fantastic and I LOVE that it hasn’t really changed in 100 years. The wax capping’s are removed exposing the honey below, then the frames are put in a centrifuge and spun for about 10 minutes, the honey is warmed slightly overnight and strained into buckets. That’s it, a completely natural product straight in to the jar! 

You can watch the process on our TIKTOK HERE

 

 

We no longer collect swarms for the general public as its a real risk for us bringing disease in to our production sites. Sometimes however we are asked to collect a swarm by someone we know and we know where the bees are from. This MASSIVE Swarm was collected in early June and it’s fantastic, it was hived straight away and within 2 weeks it had filled it’s hive and needed more space. It’s little things like this that remind you quite how amazing bees are!

We’ve been busy educating as well this month, we held our second beekeeping beginners course of 2023 which went down really well and it was a really lovely group of new beekeepers!

On Wednesday just gone we hosted Kenilworth Young Farmers for an evening trying honey, seeing the bees and of course trying on the beesuits! It’s always really rewarding seeing peoples fascination with our bees!

 

Markets for July

1&2nd July – Open Air Country Fair
23rd July – Note for our regulars, unfortunately we won’t be attending Market Bosworth Farmers Market this month.
29th July – Shustoke Show

 

As always thank you for your continued support both through online sales and reading our blog and interacting with us on Social Media, it all helps our small business to grow and reach new people

Matthew Ingram
Holt Hall Apiary

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Hooray it’s May!

Well April certainly lived up to the saying, April showers! It’s been another cold and damp month making us wonder when spring will actually arrive! Fingers crossed it’s going to change this month!

The bees have been building up nicely despite the weather but very little honey has been produced yet, unlike last year which was much earlier. We are hoping with the bees poised and ready as soon as we get some good weather they will be really busy foraging on all the plants now in flower. Oil seed rape is looking fantastic and the fruit trees are starting to look a picture. Even the humble dandelion seems to be out in force this year proving plenty of food for the bees on the occasional warm day!

All of our bees our now out on their spring sites, many right next to fields of Oil Seed Rape which will go towards producing our delicious soft set honey and make up part of our infused honey range. 

We have just started producing the first new queens of 2023 but with the weather as it is we’re not expecting them to be ready to lay for another few weeks yet.

One of the exciting things to happen in the past few days was finding out there had been an article published in the Farmers Guardian (A national farming magazine) focussing on our small business and my roles in Young Farmers an organisation that means a lot to me! 

During the middle of April I went for a day trip over to Norfolk to collect an Ezyloader, a crane designed to attach to the back of a trailer to lift beehives on and off which will make our lives so much easier and importantly save our poor backs. It’s in rather a state so will need a bit of work but it’s a project my girlfriend’s dad is very keen to take on which is great news! I’ll take plenty of pictures and keep you all updated on how it’s going 

During May we have a couple of Markets and shows so please do come and visit, these small events are a great way to help support small local businesses

13th & 14th May – Spring Fest, Curborough countryside centre (WS13 8EA)
28th May – Market Bosworth Farmers Market 
28th May – Blabers Hall Vineyard Open Day (CV7 8EP)

Thank you all for reading and supporting, remember if you’ve not already signed up to the newsletter you can do that below and get 10% off your first website order as well as getting a monthly offer on one of our honeys

Matthew Ingram

 

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The New Season is nearly here!!

Well where did March go…? It seems only 5 minutes ago it was February and the winter was feeling long and then suddenly we are in April starting to move bees to their spring sites and seeing the first of the Blackthorn out in full bloom and the Oil Seed Rape just starting to show off it’s yellow flowers. Give it another two weeks of fairly warm weather and the bees will making the most of these flowers and hopefully bringing in lots of pollen and nectar.

Oil seed rape is what we use to make our creamy soft set honey and a lot of our infused honeys too!

Back in the honey room as we’ve been super busy jarring our honey and jarring honey for other brands too. Many people don’t realise that we actually process honey for quite a few different brands all around the UK due to our accredited production facility. 

In the photo above Misha is learning how to make the perfect sized but comb from our amazing heather honey. Each slice is cut by hand, weighed and labelled to make sure they’re all perfect. If you’ve not had cut comb its well worth a try and is the most traditional way of eating honey. – CUT COMB

Many of you may have come across and article this month in many newspapers claiming that in an EU study all UK honey tested showed signs of adulteration – https://www.theguardian.com/food/2023/mar/26/uk-honey-fails-authenticity-test

I just wanted to bring this up because all of those samples are from large producers importing honey from overseas and mainly China. Honey produced by British beekeepers is extremely good and trustworthy. Here at Holt Hall Apiary we are able to trace every single jar of honey we produce back to the site it was harvested from, the day we harvested it, the day it was jarred and we keep all of this so that we can be 100% we are only providing our customers with the best product possible.  

 

Thank you so much for reading our blog and supporting us it really does mean so much.

We are out at a couple of markets this month:
Market Bosworth – 23rd April 9am – 1:30pm 
Planters Garden Centre Open Air Country Fair – 29th – 30th April 

Thank you again
Matthew Ingram

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A Fantastic Feb!

Well it’s this time again, blog writing time. What a month we have had! The whole month seems to have been busier than ever which is both good and scary considering our beekeeping season hasn’t started yet.

Much of this month has revolved around jobs in the workshop making sure all of our equipment is ready for the start of the season which really is now only a few weeks away and with each warm day the bees show us just how busy they can be!

We still have a long way to go with a couple of thousand frames (the wooden parts that slide into the hives and the bees build their comb into) As well as around 60 hive floors and 60 hive roofs… a busy few weeks ahead.

The bees are looking good, we have been doing two weekly checks on the hives, we use a method called “Hefting” which is the ‘art’, and I say art because its based solely on judgement with taking any actual measurements, of lifting one side of the hive and deciding if the hive has enough food. We are finding most do have enough food but at least half have had fondant added either because they need it or because we think in the next two weeks they will. As the weather warms up and the bees become more active they consume far more food so we have to be very careful, the worst feeling is to lose a hive so close to the spring blooms.

The rest of the time not spent in the workshop or with the bees has been spent jarring honey, as well as processing honey for our own brand we also process and pack other peoples honey and that side of the business has been growing very well over the past 6 month or so and finger crossed will continue to grow throughout 2023 and onwards.

Now I can’t get through this blog without mentioning a very special award! As many who follow us on social media are likely to know I am an active member of Young Farmer, a fantastic youth charity aimed at bringing people between the ages of 10 and 28 in rural communities together. The national federation of Young Farmers has been going for a very long time and even my grandparents were in the same club that I am in all these years on. I was very kindly nominated as the National Young Farmers Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (Awarded in 2023) We attended a fantastic black tie awards ceremony and I was lucky enough to WIN! This is a massive achievement for me and its wonderful to have Holt Hall Apiary acknowledged alongside more traditional farming enterprises as bee farming only makes up a small, but important part of the UKs agricultural industry.

Looking into March we have plenty more jarring work to do and also we will begin moving our hives to their spring sites ahead of the Oil Seed Rape coming into flower, we will update you next time.

Thank you as always for your support reading our blog, sharing our social media and purchasing our honey, it really is appreciated

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Matthew Ingram
Holt Hall Apiary

 

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Winter jobs well underway.. roll on the spring!

When I start back to the beginning of January it seems so long ago but in many ways it’s flown by, we seem to have been very busy throughout which is great… and slightly scary as this is supposed to be the quiet part of the year!

One of the highlights was going to a Midlands and Northern Bee Farmers Association meeting at Thornes, a beekeeping shop near Grimsby. It was great to catch up with other bee farmers and compare plans for the coming season. Going to Thornes also gave me the opportunity to get the beeswax foundation  (Thin beeswax sheets that the bees use to start their comb off) and the frames that slot into the hive. One of the big jobs now is assembling all 2,500 of them and building the hive boxes that the frames will go in to! 

Misha

The most exciting part of January was without doubt welcoming Misha to our small team! Misha has joined us through the Bee Farmers Apprenticeship scheme aimed at bringing younger people into the beekeeping industry. 

At this time of year most of our jobs are indoor be it jarring honey or doing the woodworking but any chance to get out with the bees Misha takes and we’ve been able to do a few checks on the hives to make sure they have enough food and add fondant (basically like fondant icing) which is an emergency feed which should keep the bees going until the first flowers start in the Spring.

I’m hoping I can persuade Misha to write a little piece in the blog in the coming months as I think many readers will be interested in learning about routes into bee farming!

Valentines day is fast approaching so I just want to mention a couple of gifts we have. First is the Valentines day Hamper which contains a heart shaped jar of honey, a honey and oatmeal Goats Milk Soap (With label that can be planted and grows wildflower seeds!) a honey dipper and a full packet of wildflower seeds, all neatly packaged ready for gifting! 

If you’re after just something a little quirky for a bee enthusiast why not adopt a bee for just £1.90 and get an adoption certificate to download and gift!

Thank you as ever for your support by reading our blog, liking and sharing us on social media, ordering from our website or buying from our stockists. As a small business we really do appreciate all of the support especially during difficult times.

We aren’t going to be attending any markets in February but orders can be placed online and sent out. We will be back at our normal markets in March!

Matthew Ingram
Holt Hall Apiary

Please do consider joining our mailing list if you haven’t already. We don’t bombard you with emails there’s normally two per month. One to tell you our latest blog has been released and the other to send you our honey of the month, a honey we have chosen to give 10% off as an exclusive offer to our mailing list members, it’s a different honey each month. You also get 10% off your first order when you join!