This summer seems to have flashed past! We are now settling back into our school and work routines as the beekeeping season is winding down.
We’ve had some terrific honey this year so far, ranging from very pale yellow to rich deep almost red with vibrant flavours to match.

I’ve noticed that the ivy is about to start flowering, which signals to me that I need to hurry and remove any honey that we’d like from the hives for the year. Each colony will need about 40lbs of honey stores to get them through the cold wet months when they can’t fly so frequently. Ivy provides a good deal of those stores for our hives and also feeds a huge variety of other insects. If you have ivy growing in your garden, I implore you not to trim it until after it has finished flowering.

Finally, I’d like to share a delicious and super easy recipe with you. It’s fig season – what could be more delicious than a warm fig drizzled with honey?

• Take a fig for each person and cut a deep X into the top
• Put a dab of butter into each of the X’s
• Grill the figs on a baking sheet until all the butter has melted and the figs are warmed through
• Drizzle a generous teaspoon of honey over each fig
• Sprinkle a few chopped nuts over the top – we used hazlenuts
• We served ours straight away with a dollop of natural yoghurt