Devon Honey Products & Services
NEW! Adopt a Hive
If you share our passion for honeybees but do not have the time, space or knowledge to look after them you may consider adopting a hive from us.
With our adopt-a-hive scheme you adopt a hive in one of our apiaries and we maintain it for you, providing you with seasonal updates and a gift from the bees.
Our schemes start at £175 plus VAT per hive per year, to include:
- A traditional beehive assigned to you for a year
- A plaque on the hive showing your details or business details
- A certificate
- Regular updates, with photos
- 6 jars of 340g honey from your hive in a gift box or hamper plus a mystery gift. This could be ideal for a raffle or present.
- 10% discount on our products
Pure Devon Honey
Much of the honey supplied in supermarkets has been heat treated for easy bottling and is often blended honey, with the bulk sometimes having been imported and having travelled vast distances.
While pasteurisation prevents fermentation and crystallisation, it also destroys the delicate aromas in the honey, yeast and the enzymes which are responsible for activating vitamins.
Sourced from our local flowers and trees our honey is not blended and has had nothing added and nothing taken away. It is pure and straight from the hive, having been painstakingly collected and stored by our honey bees.
Willow, gorse, wild garlic, heather, sycamore, nettles, rape, clover, dandelion and wild blackberry . . . these are some of the plants and trees that our bees collect nectar from. We are proud that none of our honey is “standard” and the aromas and qualities of it move with the season. Our bees like it that way and we’re happy to let them do what they do best. We think they’re the experts!
Natural Wax Products
Wax is another of the products manufactured by the hardworking honey bee. Good for making candles, but beeswax has many other uses too. We make it into foundation wax in our hives. It is can also be used as a rust proof coating on tools and ironwork, its breathable qualities make it ideal for use in cosmetics and its lubrication qualities make it useful in sewing, coating nails and easing movement in drawers and wooden window frames. For years it has been used to make leather waterproof and to provide a protective shine on furniture. More recently waxed cotton has become popular as an environmentally friendly wrapper for food?
With thousands of years of experience bees are pretty good at making this natural product.
Please keep an eye on our beeswax products as we work on expanding our range.
British Bee Stocks
It sometimes surprises people to hear that the native British honeybee is black and grey, when most pictures that you see of bees depict them as being yellow and black. The yellow variation actually comes from earlier mixing with the Italian bee subspecies, which were introduced for various reasons in the 1900’s.
Whilst it is almost impossible to ensure a pure pedigree, our bees are locally bred and are of the British Black type. Their tempers are generally calm and their production, hardiness and resistance to disease is also good.
As well as breeding bees for our own farm, we also sell queens and Nucs to local beekeepers.
Should you be interested in buying bees from us please drop us an email.
Mobile Pollination
The massive worldwide loss in insects, which can largely be attributed to the continued increases in population and over use of insecticide, needs to be addressed. This is a global issue, but we all need to do our bit in terms of protecting our countryside and improving the environment we live in.
Insects need to be allowed to breed and prosper. They in turn will assist in pollination of our flowers and crops. Pollination is key and the use of managed honeybees is likely to be the most efficient method of successfully pollinating crops. Not only will a colony of bees have numbers on mass but, being species specific, managed honey bees are likely to have the greatest success.
Beeza apiaries provide pollination services to local farmers under regulated standards advised by DEFRA.
Should you need further information please email us.
