Search
We love our bees for the sake of the bees. Not so much bee keepers, but providers of homes for thriving colonies. We manage their immediate environment, protect them from pests and diseases as far as is practical, and help them through difficult times. This involves feeding them in times of low forage and stores, rearing nucleus colonies in case of tragedy, replacing defunct queens, controlling stock temperament by selective rearing, and swarm control. They are free to leave if they want, and are happy stay when we get it right.
For more information about our methods and to join us in our beekeeping year, please see our Diary page.
A sticky by-product of beekeeping is the honey harvest. We deliberately limit the number of honey producing hives, this being decided at the planning stage going into Spring and Summer. We extract twice per year, after the Spring and then Summer nectar flows. Honey from each hive is extracted separately to preserve the individual characteristics. We also produce cut-comb honey by pre-order.
For more information about honey extraction and labeling, please see our Honey harvest page.
Bees like all livestock, are susceptible to disease and external influences. Which in the case of a wild free-ranging bee colony, could be contagions from nearby apiaries, disease spread by manipulations, their queen being eaten on her mating flights, rodents taking up residence in the hive, wasps and hornets predating them, poisoning from insecticides, and as often as not, strong colonies robbing out the weaker. Our management methods aim to mitigate the negative effects of bee life. But just in case of tragedy, we rear our own queens and make up nucleus hives of spare bees to boost depleted colonies.  
For more information about queen rearing and nuc' production, please see our Queen Rearing & Spare Bees page.
We make a few wax derived products in winter. Mostly candles, I do love the smell of beeswax candles. Also furniture polish and occasionally a bit of lippy if it's a particularly frozen winter down our way.
For more information about candles, and other beeswax products, please see our Beeswax page.
In the early years our hives were typical plain boxes as seen everywhere. Then Zoë came into her own as an artist. Following on from her first artistic hive transformation, she has continued painting brood boxes at our main apiaries. 
For more information about Zoë's art and her beautiful hand-painted designs, please see our Hive Art page.
Our recent venture is to provide apiary services. This includes whole site set up from initial appraisal to housing the bees. For peeps with established apiaries, we can help with seasonal management, specific tasks such as queen rearing and honey harvesting, or take on the management of the apiary as a whole.
For more information about how we can help with your bees, please see our Apiary Services page.
Pest and pathogen control is a major factor in honeybee management practices. Although a good strong and healthy colony will cope and deal with most uninvited guests such as wasps, hornets, and mice. There is no reason to simply let them suffer if the invasion becomes an infestation. Similarly with pathogens. It is far better to prevent the spread of disease than have to clear up the aftermath of an overwhelming infection. We help the bees help themselves through a method of integrated pest management, with particular emphasis on controlling the varroa mite. 
For more information about how we operate our IPM,
please see our Pests & Pathogen Control page.
Site powered by Weebly. Managed by 34SP.com