Bees-r-Us Our Honey

Honeybees and flowers form one of the most beautiful partnerships in nature. If flowers are to reproduce and survive, pollen must be transferred between them. Bees provide this service in return for little gifts of nectar, which they collect at each plant along the way. Back in the hive, this precious substance is worked over several times by the bees. Enzymes are added converting the nectar into a diluted solution of simple sugars and then stored in combs. Once the honey has thickened to the right consistency, each comb cell is securely sealed with a cap of wax. Safely stored in this way, the honey is kept and used by the bees as food for the winter months.

The type of honey made by the bees is dependant on the types of forage available to the bees. Crops such as oil seed rape (the bright yellow fields in the spring) produce large quantifies of honey that sets very hard, so hard even the bees could not use it in the winter, garden flowers tend to give a clear liquid honey. In the autumn some beekeepers move their hives onto the moors to harvest only the nectar from wild heather. Heather honey is thought to be the king of honeys and has a clear jelly consistency

During the all to short British spring and summer, beekeepers always try and have their bees up to strength for the even shorter 'honey flow'. This is the time when most of the available forage is abundant and bees can make a surplus which we can harvest. We are never able to supply the demands within British market. The consequence is that thousands of tons of foreign honey are imported into the UK each year to supply demand.

The further North you travel in Britain the shorter the honey flow period is. In and around the Merseyside area unless we have a surprise late crop the honey flow is all but over towards the end of July. It is then you have to consider if you want to take your bees to the heather.

As bees are believed to travel up to three miles in the search for Honey Jars forage the main flowering crops available in and around Merseyside are differing tree pollens, wild flower, rape seed, field beans, and the variety of mixed flowers from gardens and hedges. All of the above are visited by our bees and their nectar are the prime source for our honey.

Supporting your local beekeeper by purchasing their honey makes a positive contribution to your local environment. You are often helping to sustain small scale but economically viable farming, and of course you are helping to maintain your local honeybee population.

REMEMBER: To make each 1lb of wild honey some 600 bees must
collect nectar from some 2.5 million flowers