Andrew Hancock of Meltonby Honey extended an invitation to do a days beeking recently. This comes after my previous introduction which he said went really well - if "at least you didn't run away!" means "really well". Who knew that being surrounded by thousands of bees would trigger peoples flight or fight response, eh? Irrespective, we had been meaning to catch up for a coffee for a while so I accepted and booked tickets to get to our selected meeting point.
When the day arrived, I was up and out quite early with my wellies packed, remembering not to put on strong scents - bees are attracted to strong aftershaves etc, so best not to lather up as if I'm heading out on a night out. It would have been rude not to grab a coffee for the train journey though, so I opted for a Vanilla Latte from Pret. My choice of music for the journey was quite eclectic, but that's generally the case. Here are a few tracks that I listened to on the journey -
An couple of hours later, I arrived at Meltonby Honey's headquarters and was greeted by Andy with some Nitro coffee. He'd brewed this up especially for my visit and I always look forward to it because it gives you a buzz that normal coffee simply doesn't. I need to get him to teach me how to make it one day, but that's a different topic entirely!
We had a good catch up over coffee and then it was time to get down to business, so I chose a beekeeping suit. The first photo admittedly looks a bit like a spaceman, but I look pretty dapper with the shades on!
All suited up, we needed to get the trailer loaded and attached to the Bee Mobile.
Above is a picture of the trailer, you can see the smoker - a device used for covering pheromone scents and controlling bees - to the top left. On the right is a combination of Brood Boxes and a Super - the terms used for a boxes which promote egg laying and growth of new bees, or the production of honey.
There's also a flow hive, which collects the honey via a special non-invasive mechanism as opposed to the traditional way of opening the hive and removing honey comb and frames.
With all the materials we needed sorted and the trailer attached, we got in the car and drove to the secret location of Meltonby Honey's apiary. Once there, it was time to get back into spaceman mode in case any bees were a bit on the grumpy side.
Before checking frames (see above picture), Andy got me to start the smoker. As previously mentioned, this is a device used to mask the scent of pheromones and control bees - normally getting them out of the way when adding or removing boxes from the hive. The smoke doesn't harm the bees because the harshness is reduced and smoke is only used lightly. Starting the smoker was a pretty easy process, I added in some wood chippings and natural material to reduce the smoke harshness and lit the material on fire. Job done!
With the smoker lit, we could start checking frames. The above photo shows Andy checking a frame for brood and eggs. You can see that there are quite a few bees crawling all over the frame, sadly there was no queen on this particular frame - never the less, it is an amazing sight... or perhaps not if you're afraid of bees!
We continued checking each hive in turn, looking for signs of brood, eggs and honey alongside overall hive health. One particularly interesting behaviour we noticed was from a much smaller hive which seemed to be clustering around the entrance as pictured below -
For some that might look like a picture from a horror movie, but in reality this behaviour is defensive more than it is aggressive. Andy and I discovered that there were a lot of wasps in the area and that another, much larger hive was a bit tetchy too, so our conclusion was that the wasps were most likely trying to attack the hives to steal honey - or at the very minimum, sneak in to get honey. Our presence probably didn't help matters given we needed to open the larger hive to check on its progress.... ultimately leading to a bit of resistance and some sweet smelling pheramone being released. It might smell sweet, but that particular sweet smell is actually the attack pheramone, which is why the smoker comes in handy because it covers up that "communication" between the bees - effectively, stopping the attack.
The biggest reveal of the day was the Experimental Hive that Andy had been working on which involves allowing the bees to make honey without any frames resulting in naturally hanging comb as bees normally produce in the wild. This year is the first year Meltonby Honey has produced honey in this manner but this type of honey is quite popular in Poland apparently.
Below are some pictures from the Experimental Hive and Andy gathering Honey from it -
After a good days beeking, covered in sweat and smelling of smoke, we got the trailer loaded and then took a moment to grab some photos of ourselves before we headed back to Meltonby Honey's HQ for another dose of Nitro coffee and a chinwag before Andy very kindly drove me back to York station so I could catch my train home.
Before departing, Andy gave me a couple of gifts including -
- A Honey Drizzler which helps drizzle honey onto porridge or pancakes without contaminating the honey with a metal taste.
- Some Cut Comb Honey which you can get via the link for free for a limited time whilst ordering some honey and using code HONEYCOMB at checkout.
- Two jars of a special soft spread crystalised honey that is not available on the website. This honey requires extremely cold temperatures to crystalise which changes the texture and taste.
I'll pop and image of all of these below, as well as an image of my own Meltonby Honey which I purchased a while back - I will probably need to top up soon.
On the train journey home, I felt quite a "buzz" from the days experience but also from the Nitro coffee we'd been drinking. When I arrived back in Harrogate, I went to 17 Miles, a favourite pub of mine which does takeaway cans of locally brewed ales, bought a couple that I'd not tried before and went home to chill for the evening.
Overall, it was a fantastic day out catching up with Andy and I appreciate him letting me into his world, and I'm grateful for his hospitality, patience teaching me, gifts and lift. If you do fancy some honey feel free to click on the links above and patronise Meltonby Honey.