The bees at Chain Bridge Honey Farm (apis mellifera, brown bees indigenous to northern Europe ) can produce up to 50 tonnes of honey in a good season. (ie good weather)

The bees begin their honey-making year in fields of oil seed rape. Besides this crop the bees can forage on hawthorn, willowherb borage and phacelia.

This mixed flower honey is bottled and named Tweedside honey after its geographical collection area. It is generally light in colour and deliciously sweet in flavour.

Towards the end of July, Willie and Stephen together with beekeepers Joyce Walsingham, Joth Hankinson and Stephen Purvis load the hives on to specially designed four- and six-wheel drive vehicles to be transported to the heather moors.

These are found in Northumberland, around Rothbury and Wooler (sites such as Debden, Thrunton Woods, Callaly, Wooler Common, Chatton Sandyfords and Old Bewick) and in Berwickshire, amongst the Lammermuir Hills (these include Byrecleugh, Horseupcleugh, Langton Lees and Abbey St Bathans).

The heather honey is much richer in flavour and colour than the flower honey, and when it is brought back to the honey farm, much of it is cut up into piece of comb for sale. Fresh heather honey has a jelly-like consistency (it is ‘thixotropic‘). Crystals develop naturally over time, but the honey should not lose its unique flavour, which is particularly good with an oatcake!

The bees are left enough heather honey to eat over the winter, when they are moved to their third and final locations, which tend to be sheltered, south-facing sites for example in walled gardens.

Willie will check the bees occasionally during the winter, and they may need candy or sugar fondant, which tops up their reserves. If the heather crop has been good they should need very little. When snowdrops appear in the spring the bees can once again forage for pollen and the cycle begins afresh.