Raw honey from the Christmas tree farm

Keeping bees was one of those “one day” things for me, something I'd wanted to do for years. Then another beekeeper kept hives here on our land. The more we talked, the more interested I got, and in the end I took over looking after them. Now there are two strong, healthy hives making the honey.

This year the stronger hive got ready to swarm, so I split it first, an “artificial swarm”. Swarming is how bees reproduce, so this gives them that, but as a new colony here rather than flying off. That split is now our nuc: a small six-frame hive that's already full of honey, and the bees have built their own natural comb to fill every bit of space. Come late spring it moves into a full 11-frame brood box, and if all goes well it'll be making as much honey as the other two by the end of summer.

This is our first harvest. The bees are well set for winter and made more than they needed, and that surplus is what's in the jars, so there isn't much of it this year. All being well, there'll be more next year.

The bees live on the same land where our Christmas trees are grown, and forage on the wildflowers and trees across the farm: hawthorn and blackthorn in spring, then bramble and clover in summer.

In late summer they fly a few miles up into the hills for the ling heather, and they also work the Himalayan balsam. Most of the honey is from summer and late summer, with a little from spring.