Tay Bees and Honey was established to harvest the delightfully flavoursome honey to be had around the Tay and the Earn. Look out for it in selected locations – coming soon! You’ll be able to buy it as nature intended, in the comb, as well as in the jar.
Beekeepers and aspiring beekeepers in Scotland are crying out for healthy stocks of local bees to get them going or to replace losses. Get in touch if you are interested in purchasing nucleus stocks or mated queens. You may get them either from my stocks or from close collaborators at Cloverlea Apiaries.
Where have all the native honeybees gone? Most areas now have honeybees which have hybridised with imported strains, but a small group of enthusiasts (is three small?) with an isolated site in the Ochils are bringing them back and making queens available. Check out the progress we and others have been making with a new bee society for enthusiasts of the native honey bee.
Anything else? Well, with a wealth of experience behind me, why not share it? I’ve been helping the Tay Landscape Partnership find and train new beekeepers, and am willing to provide services based on beekeeping knowledge and scientific training. The beginners in the East of Scotland Beekeepers Association also benefit from training and apiary visits.
For now I’m building numbers of colonies, managing bees particularly in country estates around both sides of the Tay estuary and Earn and requeening the colonies with Scottish native stock gathered from Tayside, Fife, Aberdeenshire, Moidart and Colonsay. And helping the wonderful Jim get a honey house commissioned to get the show properly on the road.
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Interested in learning how to raise and mate your own queens? Details of this year’s Queen Rearing Workshops organised near Glenfarg by the Ochils Breeding Group are here.