Honey is why most people start keeping bees and why many commercial beekeepers stay in the business. This category covers the production side of beekeeping: managing colonies for yield, timing harvests around UK nectar flows, extraction and processing, and the legal and labelling requirements that apply to honey sold in Great Britain. It also touches on other hive products — wax, propolis, and their uses — and the wider economics of running a honey-producing operation.
The posts here are grounded in the reality of UK beekeeping conditions: unpredictable summers, variable forage, the annual gamble on whether the brambles will last more than a week. If you keep bees partly or primarily for honey, whether for sale or for your own table, this category deals with the practical and commercial questions that come with that.
Having just finished extracting our Spring 2025 crop, I thought I’d share what I have learned about processing honey. It’s a subject many new beekeepers pay little attention to, until the day comes when their bees make a decent crop. What to do with it all? Do I have to spend even more money? Is … Read more
It’s quite alarming how much honey and wax I used to lose before I purchased my Dana Api-Melter from Swienty. That particular piece of equipment is not cheap; a statement which applies to pretty well all the various machinery that can go into a honey extraction facility. How much? Well, mind your beeswax! Luckily, I … Read more
Normally, I send out an article each Monday morning, having written it the night before, but it’s all gone pear shaped. On Sunday, after doing lots of bee stuff, including adding clearer boards to hives, I was too tired. Today has been full-on honey extraction (spring honey crop), followed by adding clearer boards to the … Read more
People often tell me all sorts of extraordinary things about my honey, and honey in general. Some customers buy it because it’s delicious, or they want to support local producers; others have, shall we say, a diverse range of theories on the benefits of honey consumption. It’s one of those odd situations where the seller … Read more
How We Harvested Honey This Year That’s it; we have finally finished extracting honey for 2022. We got 1,540 lbs for the season, an average of 55 lbs per hive, using the number of full-sized hives in the spring as the denominator. We took a small amount in the spring (270 lbs) but most was … Read more
Recently I visited waitbutwhy.com and downloaded a sobering document. I’m sober anyway, not having touched the product of yeast + sugar for many years, but this document jolts me into full clarity of mind. Laser focused sobriety. That could be my new super-power. The document is a one page chart which breaks a 90 year … Read more