Buoyant roadside honey sales since lockdown

[Jowlpost]

You lost 31 out of 44 colonies in Oxfordshire last winter?

PS there are 4 of us in the street here. 1 lost all 6, the next 3 out of 4 and the other all 3. Add that to ours as we didn't find this out until we started asking. In remote placs like West Virginia you have to be registered (like most other countries in the world) to keep bees, and by law you have to report every colony loss .. but applying the Donald theory .. if you have no bee keeper registration ... you have no records .... so you have no problems.

 

[Erichalfbee]

PS there are 4 of us in the street here. 1 lost all 6, the next 3 out of 4 and the other all 3. Add that to ours as we didn't find this out until we started asking. In remote placs like West Virginia you have to be registered (like most other countries in the world) to keep bees, and by law you have to report every colony loss .. but applying the Donald theory .. if you have no bee keeper registration ... you have no records .... so you have no problems.

So there is something very very local going on here?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

But the NBU, plant health etc. stayed under Government control as APHA, lets begin to separate facts from fantasy shall we?
still no proof of CCD in the UK

Correct .. We had 49 colonies in September, 44 were on their own stores and we set up 5 control nucs. We lost 31 of the 44 but all 5 of the nucs were fed sugar, and all survived.

Sounds like it could have been starvation - or at least poor management

 

[MuswellMetro]

£9/340, £6/227, £3.50/135. Surrey Bell Heather £7/227. Baker's Honey £18/1kg, £7/400g.

The beekeeper up your road is living in the past: either he wants to shift it quick, worried if he raises it to £5.50 this year and £6 in two years that it won't sell (it will, all day long) or doesn't care that he's undervaluing a quality local product and holding back the price for others. There's a bloke at a market in Maldon, Essex, selling 1lb of local honey for £2.50. Get my drift?

Hertfordshire BKA ran an online questionnaire recently to find out how and where and what people do to sell honey: turns out that the average is £5 for a 1lb jar, so a lot of beekeepers are doing themselves and others no favours, and have been dong so for a long time.

For pity's sake: what other product stays the same price for 27 years?

I'm ex Herts BKA beekeeper but now live near Arnos Grove London and sell honey at my door for £8/350g or 2 for £15, 3 for£20. i am about average for london suburbs but LBKA sell their central london honey for £1 per ounce so£8 for 227g or £12 for 340g or £15/16 per lb. i have sold honey at LBKA prices at RHS events in central london, i couldnt beleive i would sell any but all the honey i took to the event sold

 

[enrico]

I'm ex Herts BKA beekeeper but now live near Arnos Grove London and sell honey at my door for £8/350g or 2 for £15, 3 for£20. i am about average for london suburbs but LBKA sell their central london honey for £1 per ounce so£8 for 227g or £12 for 340g or £15/16 per lb. i have sold honey at LBKA prices at RHS events in central london, i couldnt beleive i would sell any but all the honey i took to the event sold

I love your prices because when Londoners come to the sticks they take a whole box of my honey back with them.

 

[steve1958]

Instead of sticking a label on the honey jar you could attach a small card or leaflet with an elastic band containing all the necessary information.
Your regular customers would probably be happy to decline the offer of a leaflet, also you probably would only need supply one leaflet if they purchase several jars.

 

[Jowlpost]

But the NBU, plant health etc. stayed under Government control as APHA, lets begin to separate facts from fantasy shall we?
still no proof of CCD in the UK

Sounds like it could have been starvation - or at least poor management

Hi Donad . thanks for that insight into your wealth of knowledge.

 

[Jowlpost]

So there is something very very local going on here?

Yes because we are the only ones to have tested for glyphosate. Think about it 560 x the legal limit .. not quite enough to use honey as a week killer.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Hi Donad . thanks for that insight into your wealth of knowledge.

Thanks for reminding of Johnson's quote
that insults are the last resort of the weak minded when they feel powerless

 

[Erichalfbee]

Yes because we are the only ones to have tested for glyphosate. Think about it 560 x the legal limit .. not quite enough to use honey as a week killer.

You miss my point.
Im not doubting your report
I was trying to get to the bottom of your losses and whether this was just in your street and whether other parts of Oxfordshire had seen bee kill on this scale.

 

[Anthony Appleyard]

A park near me has 2 hives, and sells their honey in jars which are hexagonal when seen from above.

About losses, May 2020 had a month-long drought, the hardest spring drought since records began here, and it wiped out my gooseberry crop, and my rhubarb stayed in tight shutdown mode all May and until a few days into June.

 

[ericbeaumont]

i couldnt beleive i would sell any but all the honey i took to the event sold

Reckon that LBKA understand the market and target the right audience, MM, but some want shot of their honey and aren't bothered by price.

I mean, look at this one, a beefarmer in business to make a living, selling at 1967 prices with a label that's worse than the worst that Thorne could come up with. Would be worth buying all their stock and selling at the right market at twice the price.

 

[beeno]

Nobody has done that.
I simply stated that they were not mandatory in some circumstances which is the case
Yes this is indeed a public forum and the the links posted are also in the public domain.
My recommendation, for what it’s worth, is that if anybody is really concerned about labelling they contact their own trading standards office because it will be TS that will be feeling their collar.

Yes, but the circumstance is not "selling at the gate" to members of the public as I interpret it which a lot of people do.

 

[AndyJ01]

Reckon that LBKA understand the market and target the right audience, MM, but some want shot of their honey and aren't bothered by price.

I mean, look at this one, a beefarmer in business to make a living, selling at 1967 prices with a label that's worse than the worst that Thorne could come up with. Would be worth buying all their stock and selling at the right market at twice the price.

£4 including VAT??????

 

[ericbeaumont]

£4 including VAT??????

That's after 31p for the jar and something for the label. If Roper were to supply a shop and give a discount it would be even more pointless to extract, bottle and market and they may as well go back to packing in drums, which they did until 2002 when they changed to packing their own for retail.

For some weird reason they still retail at bulk honey prices, which are around £3-3.80/lb. Problem for the rest of us is that selling so cheaply reinforces the idea to consumers that honey is of little value.

Why do they mention VAT? Honey is a food and zero-rated.

 

[Hebeegeebee]

I don't understand the VAT bit either.....
Note though Eric, that everyting in London is more expensive than in other parts of the country.

 

[North End Bees]

I mean, look at this one, a beefarmer in business to make a living, selling at 1967 prices with a label that's worse than the worst that Thorne could come up with. Would be worth buying all their stock and selling at the right market at twice the price.

I notice they're also advertising it as 'local raw honey'.
I thought it was against the regulations to sell honey as 'raw' (even if you haven't actually heated it).

 

[enrico]

I notice they're also advertising it as 'local raw honey'.
I thought it was against the regulations to sell honey as 'raw' (even if you haven't actually heated it).

Please don't let's argue this point again. It is not against any regulations. It is personal choice!

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Please don't let's argue this point again. It is not against any regulations. It is personal choice!

There's no specific regulation as yet, but TS take a pretty dim view of it.

 

[North End Bees]

There's no specific regulation as yet, but TS take a pretty dim view of it.

Yes, and TS can enforce by law that a person takes all their 'raw' honey off the shelves and relabels it.
Labelling honey as 'raw' infers it has superior properties to 'ordinary' honey.