Honey Sales

The sales on our honey has been so encouraging with nearly 70 jars sold, what is more encouraging is that everyone who has bought it has come and told me how different it tastes to shop bought honey and how much they love the flavour.

One colleague told me he eats it spread on bread with cheese, I will have to take his word for that as I don't eat cheese myself, my favourite way of eating it is a spoonful in a bowl on natural yogurt and a few fresh raspberries, delicious!!

I am very naughty though, at bedtime I love to take a spoonful and just let it melt and slide down my throat, I am sure my dentist would have something to say about that if he knew but I cant resist the temptation as the pot sits next to my bed.

I do believe it is also helping with my acid reflux, whether it is all in my head I am not sure but if you search the Internet, honey has such fantastic properties and they claim it is good for the digestion so I will continue with my naughty but nice bedtime treat.

The Honey Business

A fascinating programme was broadcasted today on radio 4 - The Honey Business

This programme is well worth a listen to anyone wanting to compare a commercial honey to a raw pure honey like Melys Honey / other local honey produced by your local beekeeper.

I know what I would choose! but dont take my word for it listen for yourself here

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b014m76w

Selling Well!

I am so thrilled that the honey is already selling extremely well, lots of people we know have been buying in bulk and I have left a jar at a local retailer to see if they would be interested in selling it.

What struck me today was the fact that some of the people who have bought our honey have bought it to help their allergies. This took me a bit by surprise, I know honey is good for you, that it is antibacterial, antifungal and keeps for ever!I also new that it was good on open sores and ulcers but allergies

this I did not know.

Feeling a little stupid for not knowing this I had to find out what information was out there on the net,

there was pages and pages that you can read about it, I am not certain if it has been proven but it does seem to make sense.

Basically if you are one of the million Hay fever sufferers, if you eat a spoonful of a local honey over a period of time before the pollen starts it helps to alleviate the horrible symptoms naturally.

How good is that, clever little bees.

I need to do a bit more research on the benefits of honey so that I can ad  information page for you all to read. I remember as a little girl my Nain (grandmother) used to give me a teaspoon of honey in warm milk to drink before going to bed, she said it helped you sleep, and I know that works. 

I still reach for my bedtime drink now especially if I am over tired.

Another thing she passed on was to add a teaspoon of honey to a mug of hot water with a squeeze of fresh lemon, this was said to be a cure for sore throats, again this remedy has been carried on in my family and we all reach for the ccomfort of it at the first sign of a sore throat or a cold.

Now what else can I find out?

Cappings turned into candles

My beeswax cappings have now been turned into small pure beeswax candles and I can say I am delighted with the results.

Some facts
Unlike most of the manufactured paraffin candles, beeswax is hypo-allergenic, great for people with allergies or other sensitivities and for those of us who want a safe, clean burning candle in our homes.

The candles have no perfume or anything else added but have a slight aroma of honey and will burn for approx 3 hours much longer than a parafin wax equivalent. When burned in a draft free environment with a wick trimmed to 1/4" a beeswax candle will burn bright and clean without smoke or soot

General safety and burning tips for beeswax candles
•Never leave a burning candle unattended.
•Keep candles away from children and pets.
•Keep candles away from flammable materials or overly crowded settings.
•Burn candles only in a draft-free environment away from fans, open windows, air ducts, etc. This will help to prevent any dripping or smoking.
•Light the wick from the base of the wick, where the wick comes out of the candle, to allow the beeswax to absorb into the wick.
If you would like to buy please go to Honey and Honey Gifts tab for more information or visit my etsy shop.
 

its arrived

It has arrived, at last!!

Over the weekend, It seems to have been all steam ahead, the label was completed by son Tom and I must say he did a fantastic job and didn't lose his patience with me despite the numerous changes he had to make, font sizes, positioning of text moving graphics etc etc

I hope you all like it as we are thrilled with our new Brand.

Once the label was sorted it was time to jar up the honey!

The Jars we have chosen are the hexagonal ones, they hold 12oz, 340g in weight

The selling price is £5 a jar.

The honey is a light colour and looks like it will set in time. It is a mild tasting honey and delicious on toast or drizzled on your cereal.

If you would like to buy a jar please contact me by email melys@maelgwyn.co.uk or visit my shop at etsy.com

Beeswax from the cappings

I have read a few articles about using the capping's that were left behind after harvesting the honey, all agreed that you needed to make sure you get the last drop of honey out of them which we did,

 and the yield was 10lb, can you believe that?

Next they tell you to let the bees clean the capping's, so we put them out on a tray and in a bowlon the patio to see what would happen! It was like a swarm, the bees came from nowhere, the smell of the honey obviously was so strong that they came and found it. It took them just 2 days to take away every last drop of honey leaving me with what looked like shavings (the wax).

As I have never dealt with beeswax before I decided to have a go last night whilst Mel was out, the last thing I needed was his opinion or to be told I was doing it wrong!! I like to make mistakes on my own lol

With a large saucepan of water on the stove, and another pan to act as a double boiler on top I placed some of the shavings into the pan, slowly and surely they started to melt but instead of a nice clear wax that I should be getting, I had a lot of debris and some sludge in the mix,

 time to read about it again!! what was I doing wrong?

I soon realised that I should have washed the capping's first, to late now! so I continued on but added a mug full of water to the pan, apparently the wax separates easily in the water.

The liquid then needed straining to remove all the bits/sludge so I found an old jelly bag from my preserving days and strung it up so I could empty the hot liquid into it, placing a silicone tray below I pored it in slowly to avoid any splashes of wax.

Soon the wax/water mix started to drip out the bottom of the bag, leaving the gunk behind and as it cooled the wax hardened and the water separated. I was onto a winner!!! or so I thought.

I finished that whole batch and then took a look at my wax, it was clean no debris, so that had worked but something was still wrong, the wax was pliable not brittle so back to the text book I went.

I cold smell honey in the wax and that should all have been washed out, so I decided to re melt it all again in the double boiler and add more water in the hope that it would separate.

This time the colour of the wax was a lovely pale shade of yellow and the water that was left behind had the distinct honey smell I think it is now OK.

This morning I had another look at my handiwork and I am quite pleased the wax is hard and brittle and looks like it should with no smell of honey.

Next time though I will definitely wash it first, it would have made the process so much more easier and quicker. You live and learn don't you!!

Now, what to do with that lovely wax, candles, tea lights or polish??  any of them would make great Christmas presents, but what to choose....

Labels to Be(e) or not to Be(e) -pardon the pun

The honey is delicious and is sitting at the moment in the settling tank awaiting bottling. We are not quite ready to bottle up yet, so you will have to wait a little longer to find the weight of the honey. I hopefully will let you know in the next week or so.

In the meantime we have a big problem!!

Labels, who would think it would be so hard to decide on a label for the Honey jars.

Do we want to buy one from the beekeeping suppliers like everyone else, no I don't think so! Everyone and his dog seem to be using these, and if we are going to create a brand we need something a little better.

After hours and hours of trawling through the Internet looking for alternatives that were a bit more upmarket and reasonably priced, we still haven't decided on any, they are either far to expensive for the small amount that we want this year or they look terrible, all cottagy and flowery.

So we have now decided to make our own, how foolish this may turn out to be remains to be seen as we rarely agree on things of this nature and end up falling out.

We were supposed to sit down today and design  a label, but Mel had to go to his choir and it was such a lovely afternoon I went fishing but I can tell you it was well worth it two very nice 3lb trout were caught by me and my son was a little disappointed that I caught the first one on the very first cast.

Ha Ha

Disaster had struck when we got home, the beef Madras I had put in the oven for supper before leaving was so burnt it was inedible, I had the oven on to high instead of a slow cooking so we all had to make do with a pie out of the freezer.

Maybe I should have designed that label after all!!