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Bees on the moor

Posted by Rachel Marston 13 Aug 2009 12:22pm

I was on holiday in Northumberland last week and while walking over a huge area of moorland I noticed the number of bees scouting around through the heather. The flowers were not quite out but you could just begin to see a haze of pink around the edges of the buds and I am sure this week the moor will be a haze of purple. I thought there might be hives not too far from where we were walking. A few years ago I wrote a feature about a beekeeper and went to visit him in Scotland so I knew that some beekeepers tend to move their hives to where the greatest sources of pollen are. Sure enough a few moments later we came across a huge bank of hives. The picture is not great, it was only taken with a phone. I hope, weather depending, there might be some great heather honey on sale in Northumberland very soon.

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Comments (1)

at 20:04 on 14 August 2009, Peter McFadden said:
I've been moving my beehives to the heather above the Conwy Valley in North Wales every August for 30 years. I've only missed two years since I started with bees in 1978. The heather makes a beautiful strong flavoured honey, which is very popular. Heather honey needs warm, sunny weather in August. Last year we had no heather honey, because August was so wet. This year looks much better, and the wet weather in July has helped the heather plants to grow. Moving bees to the heather in August and back home in September is hard work, but we enjoy it and we do enjoy the honey. We always leave enough honey in the hives for the bees to eat in the winter. Each hive needs about 20kg of honey to survive the winter