Last year we took no honey from the hives. One of the two colonies absconded in the balmy 2022 Autumn and the other struggled with a 3-year-old queen. We split that colony, raising a new queen in 2023 but much of the honey they produced wasn’t capped and we simply fed it back to the bees.
With a new queen going into this year’s season, the single colony prepared to swarm in Spring, but we fortunately spotted this on the first day back after the Easter holidays and carried out an artificial swarm. The rest of the season went smoothly and students from year 7 and 9 and the sixth form helped with inspections. We have finally constructed the solar oven to purify the wax we have accumulated from over the year. It is yet to be used but we look forward to some hot weather to try it out.
The honey was extracted by teachers from the Science department in the summer holidays and more recently filtered and bottled by year 8, 10 and 12 students. Unfortunately, the colder Autumn weather has meant some of the honey started to crystallise before passing through the muslin filter, resulting in more wax in a few of the jars. This is Twyford’s fifth crop having sold our first 27 jars at the 2019 Christmas concert.
This year’s beautiful honey label has been produced by fine-art student Emily Moran in the sixth form.
2024 Twyford honey is available to buy on ParentPay now, with all profits going to the PTFA. In the first instance, there will be a limit of two jars per family.
