Delicious Catford honey produced harvested from his bees in Birkhall Road by Gregory Boon.

Nature captured in a jar

Sometimes when I look at the blossom in the springtime, or the lushness of a forest in the early summer, I have a feeling of wanting to be more a part of it, to reach out it, to touch nature.We can't do that, but my bees visit the flowers and bring part of nature back to their hives.Then they transform it into honey, which is nature on your toast, your crumpets by the fire in the winter or however you like to have your honey.

Maybe this is one reason why I keep honeybees here in my city garden. It certainly does keep me in touch with nature; the seasons the temperature, how much rain we've had recently and thus which trees and flowers are providing nectar.

A swarm of bees in the next-door-neighbour's oak tree

A swarm in a neighbour's oak tree.With no combs to protect swarming bees rarely sting people.

Honey being spun out of its comb in a honey extractor

The hard earned harvest being spun out of the combs in a honey extractor.

Honey bees make honey so that they can eat it when it's too cold to forage.

The honey

One of my first memories of honey, as a child, was some honeycomb that a family friend gave to our family.I expect that it was mainly spring blossom honey from plum and apple and cherry and pear and horse chestnut and others.It was delicious.Some time after I'd started to keep bees myself, probably in the mid seventies, the farmers around started to grow oil seed rape (the yellow fields that one sees almost all through the spring and summer now).Rape provides lots and lots of nectar, but unfortunately it has none of the complexity, richness and depth of nectar from blossom and other flowers, and because the nectar is so easy for the bees to gather, they prefer it over other nectar sources with the result that quite a lot of country honey has a lot of rape in it. I was very pleasantly surprised when I moved my bees to London in 2001.

Buying honey

My honey can be bought from the wonderful You Don't Bring me Flowers near the station in Hither Green and you can have it delivered by the The Organic Delivery Company (but with a London Honey label, search for South London honey).The price directly from me at home is £4.50 for a 225 g jar or £9 for a 454 g jar.

Looking after your honey

Properly ripened honey has a water content of about 17% and can keep for years and years.Sometimes after it has crystallized the water content can become uneven, and the top layer of honey might start to ferment.If that happens, the fermented honey will be softer than the rest.It can be scraped away with a spoon or knife.It won't hurt you as far as I'm aware, it's just a bit alcoholic.Keep the lid on your jar as honey is hygroscopic and will absorb water from the air and thus ferment.

Most natural raw (ie not pasturised and pressure filtered) honies with will set hard within a few weeks of being harvested unless the weather is very hot.Further crystallisation often creates streaks in it.The pollen helps the natural sugars to form crystals.If your honey is solid and you prefer liquid honey, simply heat it to about 43°C, though this temperature does vary by a few degrees between honies from different nectar sources.I now bottle all my honey straight from the settling tank (where the bubbles and tiny bits of wax float to the top) and then melt it in the jar as needed.I use a carefully controlled tank of hot water which is never too hot to hold my hand in, but you can easily melt honey in the jar in a good fan assisted oven at about 45°C. Wax melts at about 64°C so you can melt honey in the comb without melting the wax, though I'd only do this with the comb immersed in honey to prevent the comb from collapsing under it's own wieght.

Bees for sale

I keep my bees in my back garden and I don't want any neighbours to be bothered by them so they have to be reasonably docile.I almost always inspect without gloves and sometimes without a veil either during flows and warm weather with the best colonies.With the one from which I'm currently breeding queens, I can usually open them up without smoke either.

Replacing less docile (though still not bad at all) queens is a constant task as I cannot control the drones in the area.Last year one nearby beekeeper whose colonies had aquired some rather nasty genes requeened them all with more docile bees, some of which were from my stock.He's having fun breeding queens again this year.

When I raise a queen for nucleus I let her lay for long enough to see that the laying pattern is ok.There isn't time to wait for the progeny to hatch and replace the original bees in the nucleus, so I won't know how their temperament is and thus cannot guarantee that they are docile.These queens should be fine, but if not, you could requeen them easily with a queen from a professional queen breeding operation, where they have many years of expertise and control over the drones.I bought some myself this year to improve my stock faster, and they cost £25 each.

I've had many people asking for bees this year so I've decided to sacrifice some of my honey production and provide three comb nuclei which I'll be selling for £100.They'll have two combs with brood, from eggs to capped brood, and stores of honey and pollen.It's quite delightful to watch a small colony build up.

Contacting me