Hello Everyone,
I hope you had an awesome Christmas and an equally excellent New Year!
Not only is this the first blog post of this year/season but it’s also the first in three months. I’m sorry about not writing more but at the end of last year everything was getting in the way and writers block is a serious problem!
As I didn’t do a summary post in December of how last year went, I’ll try to do a quick one here before outlining what my plans are for this season.
There were three main objectives that I set myself last year:
1. Produce my own queens and sell nucleus colonies.
2. Rewilding Rainford.
3. Produce cider to sell.
This is how I did…
Produce my own queens and sell nucleus colonies
The year started with Adam (Kat’s brother) and I building a queen rearing apiary at the allotments. I’d deemed it the best place as it was sheltered from strong winds thanks to the surrounding woods. There were an abundance of other colonies nearby as the last beekeeper wasn’t the best at stopping his hives from swarming, and it was a nice secure location with lots of allotment owners to alert me of any funny business going on.
Around May time I produced my first queens and they were beauts! I like to use the term “juicy” when it comes to a decent queen because you want them to have a humongous abdomen full to the brim with eggs. I made up 27 Nucleus colonies with my new queens and left them alone to settle for a month or so. If I was going to sell them on then I wanted to make sure they were healthy, calm and productive. Sadly, five of the Nucs failed due to the queens not returning from their mating flight or some other reason but that still left me with 22 Nucs for sale. As a side note, the average success rate of queen rearing in the UK is around 70% so I did alright with an 81% success. This has settled my mind that the allotments are a great place for rearing queens.
After advertising “Nucs for sale” for the majority of spring and summer I didn’t get a single (proper) message which was quite demoralising to be honest. I know a few other beekeepers who sell hundreds of Nucs over the year and I was struggling to shift one! That was until a lovely bloke called Paul got in touch. He was wanting to get some new genetics into his apiary and he liked the way I talk about/ treat my bees in social media posts. He popped over to the allotments a day or so later and I let him have his pick. I described each Nuc and their personalities, and we ended up chatting for a good few hours after I’d placed his new Nuc in the back of his car. Genuinely interesting guy!
About a week or so later Paul contacted me again stating that he loved his new colony so much that he wanted another two off me! He knew exactly which ones he wanted too which made things easier.
As the beekeeping season started coming to a close, I realised that I wasn’t going to be selling any more Nucs (don’t buy Nucs in Autumn and Winter!) so decided to use them to restock any of my hives that were looking weak or sick going into winter. I still have 14 Nucs left which I’ve made a plan to sell as overwintered Nucs in March (if there are any takers that is).
So in summary, I am happy with how the queen rearing went and how many Nucs I produced but I am disappointed that I didn’t get the sales I was hoping for. Talking to Paul about this, he suggested doing lessons because if people saw how I look after my bees, then they might be more willing to buy some from me. I think I need a few more years’ experience before I teach others, but I may look into doing beekeeping experiences in the future. Either way I’ve got a returning customer in Paul, so I’m really made up with that!
Rewilding Rainford
The Rewilding Rainford hashtag became quite synonymous with Myst~Tree Rainford Cider and Honey early last year thanks to a post I made on the Rainford Village Facebook group. In March I was in negotiations with the Eden Project Wildflower Trust to try to help them save some endangered wildflowers while at the same time improve Rainford’s biodiversity. I managed to get a huge amount of support from the community and the Parish Council. I went to different landowners and asked if I could use some of their land for the meadows, most of which agreed. It worked out that I had collected permission for around 18 acres of land around Rainford available for the Eden Project to plant with wildflowers!
Not content with letting the Eden Project be the sole contributor to Rewilding Rainford I decided to do my bit in encouraging others to help out too. I went around donating my wildflower seed packets to Rainford schools and local businesses, to start the discussion among their followers of how they can help to Rewild Rainford. I did a few interviews with media outlets explaining what I was trying to do to get others on board. I also built thirty bird boxes that I was going to put up around Rainford with the help of our local Rangers to help our nesting birds.
Sadly, with all good things, there are bumps in the road. There was a massive misunderstanding that had gone on with the Eden project. In short both of us were expecting the other to source the meadow seeds to fill these acres of land. It was a horrible realisation as the emails up until that point were so positive. Reading back through them now, it was never actually stated who was going to pay for the seeds or where they were coming from. I mainly told them of my rewilding idea, they said that they’d love to help, and we went from there. To them, ‘helping’ was sowing the seeds, harvesting them and then selling them (for themselves). To me, them ‘helping’ was to provide me with the endangered wildflowers we were trying to save as I had no way to access these …
It was definitely a shock but after a pretty frank conversation it was stated that the Eden Project is a “business and not a charity”. After that I stepped back from talking to them about my rewilding project and decided to try and do it off my own back instead. Annoyingly, it had taken the better part of the year to get to this point so I couldn’t really get any seeds in the ground in time for the end of 2022.
Another bump was that due to a number of reasons my bird boxes and insect houses couldn’t be put up around Rainford. The boxes remained in my garage until I decided to give them all away to the people at the Rainford allotments in late October. It is annoying that they couldn’t go where I wanted them to go but I am super happy that they have all still gone to good homes.
The positives that came from my Rewilding Rainford project are that more people are aware of the pollinators’ plight, with most people I talk to telling me of their small wildlife sanctuaries in their gardens. This makes me feel a little better about my failure with the Eden Project as my main aim was to get people more invested in helping out our wildlife and I believe that I’ve managed that to some extent. I also did some calculations (bee maths) the other day and found out that enough of my wildflower seeds have been sold to plant 2500m2 of wildflower meadow! My attempts have also convinced Rainford in Bloom to look to planting up wildlife areas which I’m so happy about. If anyone can help the local wildlife through planting, it’s them!
Produce cider to sell
In Short, I chose not to sell cider this year because of this little cherub’s arrival.
I just didn’t want to spend any more time away from Esme than I had to, so the idea of going from house to house and spending an hour or so picking apples and carting them home day to day until I have enough to produce cider just didn’t appeal to me. I love making cider, especially the pressing of it as it’s the freshest apple juice you will ever taste! But I love my daughter more and as this is still mostly a hobby for me, I decided that I should put it on the back burner for a bit longer.
This (2023) year’s objectives
As you can tell from my numerous posts, I love to make a good list. It doesn’t matter if I complete everything, but I like knowing that I have certain things to shoot for.
This year is similar to last, but I think they are (for the most part) more manageable targets:
1. Produce my own queens again and sell nucleus colonies.
2. Research, plan, prepare, to do beekeeping experiences.
3. Continue Rewilding Rainford project.
4. Sell larger jars of honey (1lb).
5. Donate my honey to food banks.
6. Produce cider to sell.
7. Write 1 blog post per month.
8. Become a recognised business in Rainford.
Produce my own queens again and sell nucleus colonies.
Last year was a good start, I learned a lot from my mistakes, and I know I can produce excellent queens. The hard part of this objective will be selling the Nucs. I’m going to look into doing a bit more advertising in the local area, may even try the local newspaper… although I’m not sure how many people read newspapers these days. The best thing I could do is advertise through my local BBKA group but as I’m a business and not an individual they try not to play favourites. I’m hoping that with Paul being well known in the local beekeeping community I might get some sales from word of mouth.
Research, plan, prepare, to do beekeeping experiences.
I’m going to work out a nice little experience that I can do so people can get a taster of what it is like to be a beekeeper. I’ll probably point anyone willing to do a course towards the Ormskirk and Croston BBKA group but before that, as Kat and I found out, it’s much better to see if you can handle being around bees before you opt to pay a bunch of money for a course and equipment. That’s what I’ll aim to be providing. A chance for you to experience the noise and the movement of bees flying around you as well as the excitement of putting your hands in a box of stinging insects! I have just bought a bunch of a few sting proof suits and gloves so there’s no reason for anyone joining me needs to be scared!
I'll probably make a post about what I'm offering in detail soon. Will also need to find some weekend dates where I'm free enough to actually do them!
Continue Rewilding Rainford Project.
I am going to try this again but with a much smaller scope and be the one organising it all. Steve, from Inglenook farm, has said there is an acre patch of land that he isn’t wanting to use for anything that I can “have” so I’m going to try to raise some money to buy enough wildflower meadow seeds to plant it up. I’m also going to ask the help of the scouts and other groups to help me clear the land and sow the seeds. I think this is much more manageable as loads of people wanted to help me out but there wasn’t much they could do, as the plan was for the Eden Project to do all the land preparation, sowing, managing and harvesting. This way, hopefully, it can be a village effort that we can all be proud of.
Sell larger jars of honey (1lb)
I keep getting messages about how people want larger jars of honey. I’ve heard you and I’m going to look into doing 1lb (454g) jars this year. The reason I stuck to 8oz (227g) jars last season was that there were a lot of changes going on in my life and with the economy, and I didn’t want any of these to impact you guys. I stuck to what I knew and already had the resources for. Hopefully everything has started to settle now and I’m hoping the price of jars, labels, etc will start to come down again too.
Donate my honey to food banks.
This cost-of-living crisis is absolutely heart breaking. I keep looking at my family and thinking about how lucky we are that I am in full time employment and have enough to start a business. It may be foolhardy business wise, but I think we all need to do our bit to help those less fortunate so I’ve decided to donate as much honey as I can to a local food bank. I know it won’t be as much as some people can provide but hopefully its better than nothing. My heart truly goes out to those that are struggling.
Produce cider to sell.
Producing cider is always on my list of objectives… let’s see if I can finally do it this year!
Write 1 blog post per month
Yet another dream objective. I’m not saying that this is definitely going to be completed but I always live in hope…
Kat and I even wrote a list of different topics I can talk about! Let’s see if I (or even Kat!) get the time to write them up!
Become a recognised business in Rainford
I have lived in Rainford since the age of 2 and as far as I’m concerned this is my home. I love being here, I love the surroundings and the community that makes Rainford the best place in the world (in my opinion). When I say I want to be a “recognised business” what I mean is that I want Myst~Tree to play a positive part in the community - be that through organising events or joining in with other businesses and individuals to help out in whatever way we can.
There you have it, a summary of last year and a list of this year’s objectives. Now you can all keep me accountable.
I hope you are all safe and well,
Greg
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