We are in the middle of a heat wave in London. I can’t even contemplate putting on a beesuit and inspecting our hives – This sort of weather makes me really respect beekeepers from warmer parts of the world – it is no fun being in your own private sauna while trying to properly check through hives.
We’ve been steadily taking off batches of honey for the last month or so. The yield this year is down on last year, but we are thankful to have some. It has been such a delight comparing the different batches – the colours and flavours are so variable depending on which flowers the bees have been foraging on.
We have also taken our first cut comb honey of the year – to me nothing beats eating honey directly from the comb. It really is the most natural and simple way to enjoy it.
Last month I had great fun giving a talk to the Stroud Green WI. I had originally been scheduled to do it in March, but it was postponed due to the lock down. We eventually got everyone together via Zoom. I talked about beekeeping in London, then we did a honey tasting. I sent them each small samples of various types of honey and we tasted them together. I think that they were amazed by the huge variations between the different types of honey and I was delighted that they appeared to enjoy our honey the most! London honey is particularly flavorsome because of the huge variety of plants that the bees are able to forage on.
This year we decided to change the material of our label – for sometime we have been trying to decrease our use of single use plastic and we felt that our clear plastic labels could no longer be justified.
Hi – I have been interested in your site after coming across it by chance. I used to live in the area (Langdon Park Road, N6) so know the area well. Some 35 years later I started keeping bees this year. A bit of an unintended hobby after trying to remove what I thought was a bee nest inside the roof space that turned out to be a false alarm. I had bought a hive to transfer the bees into it, so with an unused brand new hive, the obvious way to use it was to buy a nuc in May. It’s been a challenge getting any help from local beekeepers with the pandemic. So much stuff on You tube and online generally. And sites like yours make it very ‘local’.
Anyway, coming round to my question, when do you start harvesting your Spring honey or does it vary from year to year? And you say you harvest through the season so would that be every month? My single hive seems to be doing well and yesterday I harvested 22Kg (6 deep frames). Like the look of the new labels btw. Is it adhesive backed paper?