Category: Uncategorized

Posted on by — Leave a comment

March Madness!

A very exciting month has just passed and spring is well and truly underway! The reason I didn’t blog last month is that I’d snuck away on holiday before the madness of our spring and summer got underway! 

Since I’ve been back we’ve been busy jarring to keep up with spring demand, not only of our own delicious honey but also for some of our packing customers too. 

We had a really exciting visit just last week with the BBC (maybe it should be BEE BEE C) on the farm filming our hives and interviewing me about honey adulteration and why cheap fake honey often sold in supermarkets impacts real beekeepers. 

Back with the bees themselves and one of the most important jobs in March is checking on the colonies after the winter months. We carefully inspect the hives, ensuring the queens are active and that each colony has enough food to sustain them until nectar flows become more reliable. Thanks to the mild weather, our bees have been more active than usual, venturing out to collect early pollen from snowdrops, crocuses, and willow trees. 

We’ve been really happy to see their growth and they look in great shape for the season to come. The other benefit of the drier spring is I’ve not gotten my pickup stuck in any fields yet!

Over the next few weeks we will be feeding any colonies that need it to spur them on and start making sure we have an even amount of brood (baby bees) in each hive so that they develop at much the same speed which makes our management much easier for the rest of the season!

Honey Lemon Drizzle Cake

Ingredients:

  • 175g unsalted butter, softened

  • 150g runny honey

  • 100g caster sugar

  • 3 large eggs

  • 225g self-raising flour

  • Zest of 1 lemon

  • 2 tbsp milk

For the drizzle:

 

  • Juice of 1 lemon

  • 2 tbsp honey

Method:

  1. Preheat your oven to 170°C (fan) and grease a loaf tin.

  2. Beat the butter, honey, and sugar until pale and fluffy.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well.

  4. Fold in the flour, lemon zest, and milk until combined.

  5. Pour into the tin and bake for 40-45 minutes until golden and a skewer comes out clean.

  6. Mix the lemon juice and honey, then drizzle over the warm cake.

  7. Let it soak in before slicing and enjoying!

Thank you for reading our short blog, if you want to know anything about what we get up to please do email us on info@holthallapiary.co.uk and I would be happy to answer it here!

Have a great month!

Matthew Ingram
Holt Hall Apiary

Posted on by — Leave a comment

January, our busy quietest month!

Well Christmas seems a long time ago now! It’s been a busy month considering its January which is normally a quieter month on the bee farm. We’ve had the builders in and knocked a couple of walls down allowing us access in to a much larger space that is our new warehouse. In total once fully racked we are hoping to be able to fit over 200 pallets in there! The main issue up to now has been the lack of space so it’s feeling a bit strange that we suddenly don’t need to worry about it. 

As part of the warehouse we have built a new honey warmer that will be able to warm about 6 tons of honey at a time, our current honey warmers along with most standard honey warmers have heaters at the top but the issue is the top of the honey drums heat up but the bottom of the drums don’t, this one has ducting in the floor to pump hot air under the pallets and hopefully speed up warming and use less power too. It’s not operational yet but I can’t wait until it is! 

The honey packing side of the business remains busy and I’m proud to say in 2024 we filled a record 247,000 jars! A number I just couldn’t have imagined a couple of years ago! They went out for lot’s of different brands into retailers all around the UK and even abroad to places like Spain, America and Saudi Arabia. 

Out with the bees we’ve been busy treating them for Varroa. Varroa is an invasive mite that lives on honeybees. We trickle a mixture of sugar syrup and Oxalic acid over the bees during the winter. The bees consume the mixture without any issues but it burns the mite which helps keep our bees in peak condition for the spring. When we go around we also add fondant which is sugar to help any hives that look a little short on food. 

In mild weather the bees are more active and so eat more food. Over the next few weeks we will go back around and check if they have eaten their fondant and if we need to top it up again. 

One of the other jobs we’ve done this month is planning this coming season. We’ve decided to stick with hive numbers around 150. That seems to be a good amount for us to produce enough honey for our own sales. We’ve decided to make up some splits (small hives) early in the year, through May and June and then recombine some later in the season to make sure they’re really strong ready for the summer honey flow.  

7d780f5e-a1a6-437a-b870-57aa7627d269 (002)

Thank you so much for reading our blog, your support as always really helps our small business as we try and build our own honey sales!

Matthew Ingram
Holt Hall Apiary

Posted on by — Leave a comment

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

 

Join our hive to get 10% off your first order

Posted on by — Leave a comment

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

Posted on by — Leave a comment

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

Posted on by — Leave a comment

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

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Summer… What Summer?

Well I think like most people we’ve been waiting and wondering if a summer will ever actually arrive in the UK… I fear the answer might be that we had summer for 2 weeks in June and now it’s over! 
Many Bee Farmers that have been doing this for much longer than me are saying this will be the worst summer crop since 2012! It’s certainly the worst summer crop per hive that I’ve seen since I started my beekeeping journey 6 years ago. Luckily we have more hives than we have done in any previous season so will produce enough to keep us going which is the main thing. 

 

d785a874-5aff-40fb-b2a2-f454704a7d0b
IMG_3100

This month has been a little quieter on the events than usual with just Planters Open Air Country Fair early in the month and Whitacre & Shustoke Show. 

Shustoke show was a great day out and well supported with lots of people visiting! 

We took our observation hive  which is always so popular with Children and Adults and is a great way of encouraging interest in bees safely without having to get everyone suited and booted.

One of the most common questions I get asked is how do we get them there and the answer is in the passenger seat! You’ve never driven more carefully than when you’ve got a glass box full of a 1000 or so bees sat next to you. Far more effective than a speed camera I can assure you!  (Scroll the image on the left/above to see them strapped in)

 

Paperwork… Not something that many people enjoy and probably not something that many people think of when they think of a beekeeper. In the last week we have had our SALSA audit. an extensive 5 hour audit on our food safety processes! This covers EVERYTHING from the honey coming in to the honey going out. Its a certification we choose to do which enables the products we process for ourselves and our customers to be sold in larger retailers including some supermarkets. As we offer honey packing services it’s become a crucial part of the business although it does make me nervous before hand!

I’m glad to say subject to us getting our calibration weights calibrated again we have passed our audit with less ‘improvements’ noted than last year which is a fantastic result that i’m really happy with! 

The title image is Misha with a nice trailer full of honey supers ready to be extracted! That honey has been taken from the hives we are taking on to the moors in a weeks time ahead of what we can only hope if a good flowering time in the Peak District!

We’ve got a few events this month!

5th & 6th August – Staunton Harold Artisan Market
13th – Honey tasting at the Deer park farm shop
19th August – Fillongley Agricultural Show
27th August – Market Bosworth Farmers Market   

Thank you as always for your support reading this blog and buying our honey
Matthew Ingram
Holt Hall Apiary

Posted on by — Leave a comment

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

Join our hive for 10% off your first order!

Posted on by — Leave a comment

June and the year is flying!

Well what a difference a month makes. Back at the start of May I was busy moaning about an awful spring, wettest on record and so cold. Saying how the bees had produced no spring crop and wondering what the plan was.

Fast forward to now and the honey crop is looking amazing, the bees are firing on all cylinders and we’ve gone from worrying they have too little food to worrying we can’t keep up with giving them enough space to store it all.

We’ve been really busy producing the first queens of the year. The process involves moving day old larvae from the selected breeding colony, one that we think has great qualities like calmness, disease resistance and of course, good honey production. The larvae is then placed in a colony with no queen and through natural instincts they produce queens cells which later hatch as queens.

Through this process we can produce up to about 30 queens a week which is more than enough for us to make the increase in hives that we want.

Currently while I’m sat writing this I’m just outside York having finished my first day training for a scheme called DASH – Disease Assurance Scheme for Honeybees run by The National Bee Unit part of DEFRA. This should mean I am able to manage notifiable diseases that impact honey bees in the UK as well as manage the treatment of the hive if they are found. It’s a course that I think will be really helpful to ensure our bees are as healthy and well looked after as possible while also reducing the amount of checks we have from the National
Bee Unit each year.

 

Thank you for reading our blog again this month, it’s a little shorter as i’ve been so busy but hope to do a longer one in the next few months!

We will be at The Open Air Country Fair on the 3rd and 4th June so please do come along and support lots of great local businesses.

Thank you

Matthew Ingram
Holt Hall Apiary

Join our mailing list for 10% off your first order!

Posted on by — Leave a comment

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

Join our mailing list for 10% off your first order!