• Honey is probably the most obvious product of beekeeping. The bees make it by collecting nectar from flowering plants, which they treat with enzymes to change the sugar content, and then fan with their wings to evaporate the water in the nectar until it is at around 15-18% water content. At this low level of water content, the honey will keep for a very long period of time, as any yeasts that come into contact with it will not be able to cause fermentation, and any bacteria that comes into contact with it will die. Once the honey is at the right water content, the bees seal it into beeswax cells so that it cannot absorb any water.

The types of plant that the bees collect nectar from have an effect on the flavour. In the Peak District we do not have any large enough areas of single crops to produce single-plant honey from farmed plants. What we do have is large areas of heather moorland, so typically in our area you'll be able to buy our local honey that comes from a mix of flowering plants, or our specialty "heather honey" which has a unique taste and texture. When the season is really good, we will also harvest some amazing Clover and Dandelion honey.

As well as the processed nectar, honey also contains several other things in trace amounts. These include tiny flakes of beeswax, pollen from the plants where the bees collected the nectar, and enzymes that the bees use to help with the conversion of sugars and preservation of the honey. Many people think that the pollen in locally produced honey can help you build up a resistance to local pollens, and hence help hay fever sufferers. The enzymes in the honey are believed to help with digestion, and their antibacterial properties are now being exploited in experiments to use honey as a wound dressing. Any flakes of beeswax in raw honey are quite edible, in fact some people like to buy their honey still in the wax honeycomb, and spread the wax and honey together on their toast.

Honey from small scale local beekeepers such as us is processed quite gently, often just being cold filtered before bottling. As keen beekeepers we know that warming the honey too much can damage some of it's good properties, so we try to do this as little as we can and with the minimum heat required.

All honey granulates eventually, as crystals of sugar begin to form and grow in the honey over time. Different nectars from different flowers produce honey that is either slower or faster to granulate. Slow granulating honey is usually sold as a liquid, and fast granulating honey is sold as set honey - that is the difference between the types of honey. If you have bought some liquid honey that has granulated, you can return it to a liquid form by standing the jar in hand-hot warm water for a few hours (with the lid undone of course)

Bees collect pollen from the flowers that they visit to use as a source of protein for rearing their brood. The pollen sticks to the bee's body as they forage for nectar, and they periodically stop to clean the pollen from their body onto a single hair on their rear legs.

You can sometimes see bees flying with large loads of pollen attached to their legs on the way back to the hive. Because different types of flowers have different colours of pollen, it is often possible to tell what kind of flowers a bee has been visiting by the colour of pollen she is carrying.

We collect pollen from our bees by using pollen trap, a device with small combs that is fitted to the entrance of the hive. As the bees crawl over the trap, some of the pollen that they have collected is knocked off into a collector.

Pollen is a good source of protein, and is often eaten as a health supplement, for example as an addition to breakfast cereals.

This is the view from our office, not bad hey?

Old Fred in Action

Honey Hives near Warslow (Peak District)

Bees are amazing and fascinating insects; here are some things you may, or may not know about them.
 

1.        The honey bee has been around for 30 million years.

2.        It is the only insect that produces food eaten by man.

3. Honey bees are environmentally friendly and are vital as pollinators.

4.        They are insects with a scientific name - Apis Mellifera.

5.        They have 6 legs, 2 eyes, and 2 wings, a nectar pouch, and a stomach.

6.        The honeybee's wings stroke 11,400 times per minute, thus making their distinctive buzz.

7.        A honey bee can fly for up to six miles, and as fast as 15 miles per hour, hence it would have to fly around 90,000 miles - three times around the globe - to make one pound of honey.

8.        The average honey bee will actually make only one twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime.

9.        It takes about 556 workers to gather 1 pound of honey from about 2 million flowers.

10.     It takes one ounce of honey to fuel a bee's flight around the world.

11.     A honey bee visits 50 to 100 flowers during a collection trip.

12.     A colony of bees consists of 20,000-60,000 honeybees and one queen.

13.     Worker honey bees are female, live 6 to 8 weeks and do all the work.

14.     The queen bee lives for about 2-3 years and is the only bee that lays eggs. She is the busiest in the summer months, when the hive needs to be at its maximum strength, and lays up to 2500 eggs per day.

15.     The male honey bees are called drones, and they do no work at all, have no stinger, all they do is mating.

16.     Each honey bee colony has a unique odor for members' identification.

17.     Only worker bees sting, and only if they feel threatened and they die once they sting. Queens have a stinger, but don't leave the hive to help defend it.

18.     It is estimated that 1100 honey bee stings are required to be fatal.

19.     Honey bees communicate with one another by "dancing".

20.     During winter, honey bees feed on the honey they collected during the warmer months. They form a tight cluster in their hive to keep the queen and themselves warm.