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So after a busy few weeks with my main work sorting picking up the pieces after staff came down with Covid, deep cleaning , reopening and then further staff sickness I decided to take today (Friday 15 Jan) off - joining the population WFH (Working from home) with a few emails and then the rest of the day in the garage making kit up...
First thing I had a honey delivery to a local farm who have a milk station and sell own-labelled honey in their rotating sales machine thingy. The milk lady wasn't there as agreed so I plodded around to the main farmhouse to see if I could drop the honey off there and the main man greeted me at the door. He took the honey from me and said wait there, disappeared back inside to find his phone and said he was chuffed to bits with the own label - and it was selling (well I did say it would) and how about having a chat about where I could locate bees on his farm.

Like many farmers he is diversifying and has a large solar farm and surrounding field strips alongside the fencing outside of the actual solar panels that are surplus to requirements and due to be planted up into wildflower strips if they can get higher level funding, or just mustard/borage if not and would I like a site....

Well.

Gift Horse and all that..!

Yes please. So we agreed a rough location and he said to call him and get access when I had time - it's alongside a dead end field track. Then he said what about another site 3 miles away....again no footpaths and nicely out of the way. Yes please. Ok. and what about another on his brother's farm (nicely en-route to my paddock) again no footpaths and surrounded by town gardens on one side and open countryside and crops the other. Very nice thank you.

So each site can probably take 20 hives, maybe more. The first one could certainly be an excellent overwintering drop-off site for my heather and migratory hives and could probably take over 100.

What a turn up for the books.....I think I may need to adjust upwards my plans for the season. Now where did I put my hammer ?
 
So after a busy few weeks with my main work sorting picking up the pieces after staff came down with Covid, deep cleaning , reopening and then further staff sickness I decided to take today (Friday 15 Jan) off - joining the population WFH (Working from home) with a few emails and then the rest of the day in the garage making kit up...
First thing I had a honey delivery to a local farm who have a milk station and sell own-labelled honey in their rotating sales machine thingy. The milk lady wasn't there as agreed so I plodded around to the main farmhouse to see if I could drop the honey off there and the main man greeted me at the door. He took the honey from me and said wait there, disappeared back inside to find his phone and said he was chuffed to bits with the own label - and it was selling (well I did say it would) and how about having a chat about where I could locate bees on his farm.

Like many farmers he is diversifying and has a large solar farm and surrounding field strips alongside the fencing outside of the actual solar panels that are surplus to requirements and due to be planted up into wildflower strips if they can get higher level funding, or just mustard/borage if not and would I like a site....

Well.

Gift Horse and all that..!

Yes please. So we agreed a rough location and he said to call him and get access when I had time - it's alongside a dead end field track. Then he said what about another site 3 miles away....again no footpaths and nicely out of the way. Yes please. Ok. and what about another on his brother's farm (nicely en-route to my paddock) again no footpaths and surrounded by town gardens on one side and open countryside and crops the other. Very nice thank you.

So each site can probably take 20 hives, maybe more. The first one could certainly be an excellent overwintering drop-off site for my heather and migratory hives and could probably take over 100.

What a turn up for the books.....I think I may need to adjust upwards my plans for the season. Now where did I put my hammer ?
Brilliant!
 

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