Tag: BeeFarmer

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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

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Hap-bee New Year!

Happy New Year! What a year 2024 was! It seems to have absolutely flown by. This time last year we were just starting our biggest ever order of 100,000 1oz jars not knowing quite how we would do it, in the end it was all fine and we learnt a lot from it! 

Throughout this year we’ve been busy growing and re-investing in the business which means that as I sit here writing this today we have filled over 3x the amount of jars as we did in 2023 . We’ve got big plans for this year too with lots of new developments and a massive 200 pallet warehouse being converted from one of the old farm building as we speak! 

The order fulfilment side of the business also came in to its own this year with Shara who works in our mini warehouse sending over 200 parcels in one day during the run up to Christmas for all of the different brands we work with.

Aside from all of the other brands we work with our Holt Hall Apiary brand has undergone a refresh which seems to have gone down well so far! During 2025 we really want to bring some of the focus back to our own brand which I think is unique in the fact we are actually beekeepers not just some large brand buying and selling honey with now actual connection to the bees! 

During this year we also continued our hugely popular beekeeping experiences and did a couple of beginner beekeeping days too. 

For those who haven’t come across them before we offer hands on beekeeping experiences for those who just have an interest in bees. You don’t need any experience or kit you just book your slot and we have about 45 minutes chatting about the bees and the ‘theory’ side of beekeeping before we get you suited up and head out beekeeping, where you really do the beekeeping yourself (with a little guidance).

The full day course is much more in-depth, the morning is spent going over the theory of beekeeping along with all of the equipment you need and what you’ll be looking for at certain times of the year. Then after a light lunch we head out for a couple of hours of beekeeping where you’ll get to go through lots of hives and learn loads!!

Finally I just want to say thank you to all of you, our customers and supporters. I’m now going into my 8th year as a beekeeper and it’s amazing to see how quickly we have grown over the past few years. That couldn’t be done without all of you, sharing our social media post, recommending us to friends and family and of course enjoying our honey. 

I hope you all have a wonderful 2025 and keep up with us throughout 


Matthew Ingram
Holt Hall Apiary

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There’s a chill in the air!

Well I didn’t quite forget to write the blog… But I am writing it on the morning it gets published! After opening the door to trick or treaters every couple of minutes last night it may have escaped my mind! 

Over the last month and going forward for the next few days we’ve been getting our bees ready for winter. Any hives that hadn’t produced enough to get themselves through winter have been fed syrup to bulk them up ready for the long winter. It’s due to cool off now over the coming week or two and that means the end of syrup feeding as it becomes too cold for the bees to consume it, that means one of the final beekeeping jobs of the year is nearly upon us. Over the next week we will be going around removing the feeders and adding something called a mouse guard, a metal plate with holes that the bees can get through but that stops mice getting in. We will also tidy up our apiaries removing any empty hives and changing over any damaged lids that might let water in. Once that’s done we won’t be doing much with them until January time. 

One thing we’ve been very happy about this autumn is the lack of wasps, normally they cause our bees some real problems because they fight their way in to the hives to eat the honey the bees have collected. This year however they just haven’t really got going which has been brilliant for our bees!

Over the winter we are busy jarring honey, over the past 18 months our business has changed quite a bit and we are now jarring honey for a large number of other brands which keeps us very busy. I think since January we have filled about 200,000 jars!!! A long way from my first 9 jars done in the kitchen when I started 7 years ago! We help these other brands with all things honey, from finding specific ones from other British bee farmers to helping with label design and printing. We all still enjoy getting suited up and checking on our bees though! 

 

Sorry this month is only a short update, we’ve got some expansion plans over the coming months so hopefully we can update you all with that in December and January.

Thank you very much for reading our blog and supporting our small business
Matthew Ingram

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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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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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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