We are members of the South Hams Branch of the Devon Beekeepers Association.
We began beekeeping in 2006. We were lucky to have the late Jack Berry as our mentor. A friendly, knowledgeable and much missed friend. We are not commercial beekeepers – we keep honey bees as a hobby. The more we learn about bees and other pollinating insects, the more interesting and fascinating we find them.
When we started we had one Nucleus hive. (A half size hive). We now have seven full sized hives and five nucleus hives. We keep our Bees in WBC hives. The traditional garden Bee hive.
We are blessed to live in the idyllic Devonshire countryside on the southern slopes of the National Park. We are wildlife lovers and are just as interested in our environment as our bees. The two are inextricably linked.
We encourage wildlife into our garden and apiary and are rewarded immeasurably. We provide food, water, shelter and habitat. We are very careful when we are gardening and leave wild areas. Our aim is to have a ‘natural’ garden with a range of habitats . We don’t use slug pellets – we use birds, frogs, toads and hedgehogs. Slug damage is minimal.
We plant many flowers, including local native flowers to provide enjoyment for ourselves and food for wildlife, and of course – for pollinating insects. Here are a few of the plants we now have growing naturally in our garden – snowdrops, crocus, wood anemone, primroses, daffodils, violets, bluebells, heather, snakes head fritillary and lilies. We also have a range of other plants, shrubs and trees such as cyclamen, honeysuckle, buddleia, sedum, lavender, fruit trees, hawthorn, beech, hazel, etc, in our garden and along our Devon hedges.
Our goal is to do our best to live sustainably and reduce our ecological footprint – particularly energy, water consumption and waste.
Our postal packaging is:
- Sustainable
- Recycled
- Reusable
- Recyclable
- 100% Biodegradable
With some thought we are able to use fewer, lighter materials. We use cardboard, woodwool fill, paper tape and labels. Wherever possible we buy locally.