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Update
July 2009
Last year we had 22 hives over 4
sites. We now have 3 hives over two
sites. This
year we will be concentrating on breading
bees.
Please contact us if you want to buy some wax or
for us to give a
presentation to a group. So far
this year we have given presentations
to a school in Barnsley and the local Women's
Institute.
Important
Notice
We are having serious problems in
beekeeping in the UK. Even
the commercial beekeepers
that we know are struggling.
Nobody that we
know has any honey.
We are
now going into winter with very limited honey in the
hives.
We also have the problem of drone laying
queens. Last year the
queens didn't mate properly so
when she lays an egg it is the male
drone bee.
Typically the males do nothing in the hive, so the few
female workers are working twice as hard. They die
and then the
hive collapses.
The weather being
out of season and jumping from cold, wet, sunny
and then
wet again. The plants released the little pollen that they had
later and later in the day. This resulted in the
little pollen that they did
bring in they eat themselves
when it was cold and wet. As beekeeper
we only take
off the excess honey. Only there wasn't any excess
to take
off.
This is the down side of having a locally
produced natural produce.
We are going to try to keep
our retail outlets supplied.
Please be patient and come back to us next
year. Send us an email
for an
update.
We have both been
beekeepers for 8 years, honey, wax and bees have
become so
much part of our lives that we are missing them already.
Fellow beekeepers have 60, 30, and 15 years experience as
individual
beekeepers and they have never seen anything
like last year for lack
of bees and
honey production.
Unlike commercial beekeepers who tend to mix honey from their various sites.
We deliberately keep the honey that we take off our hives divided into the
specific sites that it has come from.
Everything that a hive produces can be used. We want to show this to you
in a practical way. We only want to sell products that we have made with all
the gifts that the hive allows us to collect. If we do need to use other
products they are in their most natural state e.g Raw Linseed oil in our polish.
We are registered with Rotherham Council with Food Health and Safety as a
food producer.
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