Tag: 2023 Beekeeping Season

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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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