Tag: Honey

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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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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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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!

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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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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