About Willesborough Bees
We started our journey with Honeybees in 2021, growing from a single hive.
• 2022 •
Honey Harvest
Sales
Our bees, based in the garden in Willesborough, forage roughly 1.5 miles from the hives, having both the woodlands available by the William Harvey Hospital and Boys Hall, as we as the flowers in gardens and the fields locally.
These are British bees, some from local Ashford bees while other colonies were brought in from Wales for their near native characteristics, meaning they fly in light rain and down to 0c.
How we Harvest Honey
Raw Honey
All our honey is extracted by first removing the wax callings which the bees put over the cells to store their honey. The frames (the wooden frames containing the wax which holds the honey) are them spun in a stainless steel extractor so the honey flows out onto the sides of the extractor and then collects at the bottom ready to go into food safe buckets to settle.
The honey goes through a series of finer filters to remove and bits that have accompanies the honey when extracting, omost often small bits of wax, and then is left to settle bubbles out before being placed into sterilised jars.
Honey Creamer purchased
Lyson 50l Honey Creaming Machine from Abelo
I had been thinking about investing in an automatic Honey Creamer during the summer, with Abelo offering deals for collection at the National Honey Show in October I took the plunge.
I'm looking forward to adding creamed (or soft-set) honey for sale in the near future, with ~25kg of honey currently being creamed.
I was helped to pick the Lyson machine (with heating element) by the excellent review by Black Mountain Honey.
• 2022 •
Beekeeping expansion
Girls arrive from Wales
Collected some NUCs of Welsh dark bees, which are near native.
Honey Extractor
Purchase of honey extractor in spring to extract the honey the bees were busy making.
Producing Honey
The extractor was put to use and the first lot of honey from the Willesborough Bees was jarred for sale.
• 2021 •
Our bees arrived
1
Hive - 14 x 12 Nation from Cddon hives
1
NUC of local bees installed
1 very busy year
A lot of inspections and a split later.
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