Visiting a Honey Farm

I'm excited for today because I'm going on a little adventure. Well, it's not that little actually. I've just travelled 300 miles across the UK into the country of Wales. And I'm actually going to visit a farm today. But it's not any old farm. For a bit of backstory, I became a beekeeper last year. I got really fascinated with keeping bees in a hive. The more and more I learn, the more and more interesting it gets. I messaged this guy on Instagram who actually farms bees. But it should be interesting to see what it takes to become a professional full-time beekeeper. And see what the sort of lifestyle is like up here in Wales on a farm. Hello. I'm expecting your comfort car. I know, yeah, I'm upgrading. This is a lot nicer. Just arrived at the bee farm. Good to meet you. And you. My name's Griff. And I own a beekeeping company called Gwynne and Griffith. Pretty much anything to do with bees. We now sell it from the farm. Do you have a jar we can see now? I've got a small one. How does it feel having your name and your business on a jar of honey that people can buy? Yeah, well, that's the surreal thing really. You know, we started beekeeping over 10 years ago. And at the time, it was only in a couple of local shops really. But now you can go to pretty much any town or city in Wales. And I guarantee you our honey's going to be there somewhere. Griff explained to me that he really enjoyed growing up in the countryside. And he'd always wanted to be a farmer. But early on, there was one thing holding him back. My parents didn't have a farm. They had a couple of acres. And I was going through the list of our different animals. And pretty much you can't keep anything on a couple of acres. Not commercially anyway. I came to bees. Well, bees is really good. You don't need much land. They're in a small box. They fly three miles. They go into other people's land. And everybody's happy. So it's not like, you know, a farmer's cow going into someone's garden. You know, they'd be on the phone straight away. Well, bees go into someone's garden. Everybody's quite happy they're there. So I thought, right, I'm going to start keeping bees. 12 years ago, I started keeping bees. So I was about 22, 23, that kind of age. We've built it up over, you know, 10 years. Up, we're up to about 150 now. And by the middle of the summer, we should be up to about 200. If that box, if one super is full, full of the brim, that's roughly 12 kilos of honey. So which is equates to roughly about 20 pounds in weight. Last year, someone with vest highs produced six supers. Whoa. So they must have been stacked, like, right up there. Yeah. That site last year, we pulled half a ton of honey off that one site. And we YouTubed video of us taking the honey off as well. With a big trailer, petrol wheel barrow. Yeah. It was three of us, you know, we just stripping the hives and loading the trailer, bringing it back home. We live on the farm here, Brimbach. Me, my wife, and Harad, and the two kids. One more on the way. So it'll be three kids. We live very rural. You know, Wales is very rural. To go outside, you're just there with the nature, within the wilderness. And, you know, I'm lucky I get to work with the bees and drive around this beautiful country. Tending my bees and looking at the seasons and the flowers and the crops. Kids growing up on a farm in the countryside. It's the best place for them, really. You know you've met a bee farm when you see their number plate. Bee. So how many different sites do you have with bees on? I've got, I think, nine sites now. We're just driving to one of the other sites where Griff keeps his bees. But we just stopped off because there's a beautiful river and I wanted to take a look. The landscape around here is just so nice. Oh wow, I just seen something. That's probably like a cow. Those are big bones. They're massive, great big bones. Maybe a cow fell in the river upstream. Looking into that river makes me want to go fishing again. I haven't been fishing in a while. My mind has been on bees instead. What is your favorite part of beekeeping? Just coming to the hive and, you know, lifting the lid. And then just, you know, looking down to see, seeing that. So they're up in that super. These bees, they need another super, you know. Because you could clearly tell they haven't really filled the frames. But they're up in that top super. They need more space. So soon you will be adding another box on top. Probably tomorrow. This is a beautiful little site. Oh it is, look. But it is in the floodplain. So that's why these stands are different to all my other stands. The water has been up to like this kind of height. Yeah. It's pretty cool how little space the bees take up. Well that's it, you know. You just leave a tiny area really. And I mean there's room here for more. You know, I could easily put another hive stand down there. So in the summer you can check your bees and then go for a little paddle. Yeah, not that I do. How often do you come down and visit these hives? If I can, I do it once a week. But in realistically speaking it's probably once every two. So we'll take the honey boxes off and we'll put like a one-way system board in here. So bees drain through but they can't come back up. We'll come back early the next day when it's still dark. By that time all these hoopers will be empty of bees. All the bees have gone down here in the night and they can't go back up. So we bring the jeep and the trailer right up to the gate. Now it's literally handball. One box at a time and carry them into the trailer. Work on one site, one hive. Go right the way through. Put everything on the trailer. Lids back on and then shoot off. And then you drive in the bee wagon. Yeah. Back to where? Back to base, back to the farm. And we've got a building in there and we'll put the supers in there, totally bee proof. One thing you've got to be careful of with bees. People do steal bees. Unfortunately it does happen every year to someone. Anything like that happen to you? Luckily no. Any business you see on social media you think everything's going perfect all the time. It is not. Anything to do with livestock is stress. I remember I had foul brood three years ago. One of the most serious diseases you can get in honeybees. It's like a mad cow disease of beekeeping. Once that's there you burn the hive down basically. I went through this hive and I saw it. I knew straight away what it was. My heart sunk. And then you start getting paranoid thinking how far has this spread through my bees. Luckily it was just in the one. We got the bee inspectors out and we checked literally every single colony of hives we had. And it was literally in one. And then we checked them all again six weeks later. We'd contained it basically and we dealt with it. That was an disaster but it was really stressful at the time. Go back three years ago with the worst honey crop we've ever had. All of this can be all for nothing if the weather's bad. You could have the best bees. They could be in the best condition of their life. But if the weather is wrong and it's raining and it's cold you get nothing. With beekeeping if something's in flower it may only be in flower for two weeks. And I need the weather to be warm for that two weeks. But if it rains that two weeks I lose that crop. The bees can't get it. The flower goes over and that's it. You lose it. So if we get lots of rain on those key parts of the year you can lose entire crop. And that's what happened to me before. That's painful. The crop was down 40%. And 40% not down to nothing that I did wrong. Not down to the bees not performing. Just when the weather is not right they did not work in. How much of the Welsh population speak Welsh? I reckon about 40%. Very different to the English language. Once you've taken the supers off the hives. You bring the trailer right up to there. Then they come in here. They carry everything in here. So you store it in here before you then extract it. Whoa so these are all honey supers. Do you know why it's called a super? No. I've been wondering that for a while. Yeah I started beekeeping people call it super. I'm still calling it super. It's just a box. It is it is just a box. Because it's super right. It's super saying honey. These ones now are new. You know they are they they haven't been out. This is typical wet. Okay so that's what it looks like once you have it. Yeah well you can see by this it's all crystallized. A lot of this was ivy honey. So we weren't able to extract it all out. Wow right there is a massive wheel of wax. It's like a wheel of cheese isn't it? And this is all from like the wax cappings. Wax cappings and old frames. And the wax cappings am I right that's just what covers the honey. All this is another product of bees. Smells nice as well. Another block a smaller block beeswax. See the honey house? I want to see the honey house yeah. Oh this is the honey house. Oh this looks smart. We extract the honey in here. We bring honey in. We'll uncap the honey on this tank. Once this tank is full. I've got a heater element that goes on here. That melts the wax down into thin sheets. This is the extractor. Spins the honey frames out on centrifugal force. Honey comes out. We drain that into a bucket. That bucket then goes into this tank. This is a filtering tank. It's got one side. It's got a coarse filter and it goes fine as we go down. Honey runs through there. Comes out perfectly clear. We store that in buckets. We can either store it or then we can jar it. Do you know how much honey you got like last year? I think last year we produced almost three tonne. So this is the last of the cut comb honey which I've got. Wow. We'll turn this into cut comb honey. We've got two boxes left over. That's it. So you will cut this to order? Cut this to order. How much does it cost for one of those frames? I think 60-70 quid. This is the shop, the warehouse. You don't realise until you kind of delve deeper into something that there is a lot more to it. At first you sort of think, well if you're a beekeeper you need a box of bees and you need a jar to put the honey in. But actually there's a lot more to it. So this is the shop where you can get the honey from. If you like honey you need to get one of these big jars. Look at that. One kilo of honey, a one kilo jar. If you're not so into honey or you just want a little bit, you can get one of these. Baby pot of Welsh honey. I'll have these please. No problem. Alex in a bee shop is not a good idea. It ends with me spending all my savings. I couldn't help but take something from the shop. I've got this beautiful frame of honey. Like it's a full frame. Thank you very much. See ya. I'm in Wales currently and on the drive back home I pass through Bristol, which is a city where a few of my old school friends live. So I thought I'm gonna drive to their house and surprise them with some honey. It's like a suitcase. It's like a honey suitcase. So where I am right now is where a few of my old school friends live. The people who I went to school when I was 10 till when I was 16, 17. They moved to Bristol and some of them went to uni here. Some of them work here and this is where they live. And we're gonna have a feast tonight. Just prepping the table. We've got some lovely grapes, water biscuits. I never know why they're called water biscuits. They're completely dry. I've got some coffee because would you believe it? If you get a bit of cheese and then dunk it in some honey and then sprinkle some coffee beans over it, it tastes amazing. You wouldn't think it but it does. We've got some crisps and also a couple of loaves of sourdough bread. Time to unbox the honey. I'm so excited for this. This is like a dream come true. Wow. This is straight out of a beehive. Check that out. It's got the dirt on it. It's got the wax capping still in it. It's just raw, pure, beautiful gold. Thank you to the bees. That was so much fun.