Devon Moors & Coast honey · 1lb £1075 jars from the summer harvestReserve & collect
Bassitt's Bee Juice, made by bees

Pure honey from our bees in our garden

Bee basics · 4 of 6

From flower to jar

How watery nectar becomes thick honey inside the hive, and what happens on our extraction day.

In the hive: nectar into honey

Nectar is a sugary liquid that flowers make to attract insects. It's mostly water, often more than half. A forager sucks it up with her tongue and carries it home in her honey stomach, a crop separate from the stomach she digests with. A full load might weigh 30 to 40 milligrams, close to her own body weight.

At the hive she passes the nectar to younger house bees. They add enzymes, which split the sugars into simpler ones and help keep the honey from spoiling. Then they spread it thinly in the cells and fan it with their wings, warm air flowing through the hive, until most of the water has gone. When it's thick enough, below about 20% water, they seal each cell with a lid of fresh white wax. That capped honey will keep for years.

A frame of honeycomb almost completely sealed with pale wax cappings, with a row of open cells along the edges.
A frame of ripe, capped honey from one of our supers. The open cells round the edge weren't quite finished.

It takes a lot of work. One worker makes only a tiny amount of honey in her whole life, and a jar of honey is the result of a huge number of foraging trips.

Our extraction day

Three wooden honey supers stacked on the kitchen range, full of capped comb.
Full supers off the hives, waiting in the kitchen. Each one is heavy.

1. Taking off the honey. We put a clearing board under the supers a day or two before. It's a one-way exit, so the bees go down into the hive and can't come back up. Then we lift off boxes of capped honey, leaving the bees plenty for themselves.

2. Uncapping. Indoors, we slice the thin wax cappings off each frame to open the cells.

Looking down into the steel extractor, with frames spun out and honey coating the walls.
Inside the extractor. The frames spin in the cage, and honey runs down the walls.
An uncapped frame held in the extractor's steel cage, glistening with honey. Looking down into the extractor as hands turn the red crank handle, with frames blurred as they spin.
An uncapped frame in the cage, and the extractor spinning. Ours is turned by hand.

3. Spinning. The frames go into the extractor, a steel drum with a cage that spins. The honey flies out of the cells, hits the wall and runs to the bottom. The comb stays whole, so the frames can go back on the hive for the bees to fill again.

Honey pouring from the extractor's honey gate into a strainer full of wax cappings.
Out through the honey gate and into the strainer, which catches bits of wax.

4. Straining and settling. The honey pours out of the tap at the bottom (the honey gate) through a strainer that catches bits of wax. Then it sits in a bucket for a day or two so tiny air bubbles and wax float to the top.

Honey running through a fine sieve into a white settling bucket with a honey gate.
Through the sieve and into the settling bucket.

5. Jarring. Finally it goes into jars, gets a lid and a label, and it's ready. Nothing added and nothing taken away.

Rows of freshly filled jars of honey with gold lids on a kitchen worktop.
Freshly jarred, before the labels go on.

Why every year tastes different

The honey's colour and flavour come from the flowers the bees worked that year. Around Newton Abbot a spring honey leans on cotoneaster, fruit blossom and garden flowers, while a summer honey leans on bramble, clover and lime. The forage calendar shows what's in flower when.