Thanks for all your posts. I'd like to take the opportunity to answer your queries as think it;s important any potential suppliers understand who we are:
1. The liability for ensuring the product meets all the relevant regulations rests with us. We do this by conducting our own tests on the honey, jars, labels etc. We work with individual beekeepers to ensure that they understand and comply with the regulations and if they don't then we don't buy honey from them. This is no different to any relationship between a beekeeper and someone they are selling their honey to. We have a really good relationship with our suppliers and we always encourage them to give us their opinion and feedback.
If we buy in bulk, all the honey is processed in our own small processing room which is fully compliant with all regs.
Obviously, some liability remains with the beekeeper - if there is a problem with the honey itself due to the handling or extraction process.
2. All our products are directly traceable back to the individual beekeeper, so our customers can be 100% certain where there product came from.
3. The only reason our postal address isn't on the website is because our web designer advised us that it wasn't necessary and made the contact page look cluttered. She advised us that a simple contact form was easier. You will notice that our phone number IS on the page. Our business is run from a small unit at our home address and ALL correspondence that we send to our suppliers and customers has the address on. As far as I'm aware this is perfectly normal.
4. Re
ur hive sponsorship scheme. £250 for 15 lb of honey may sound like a lot of money, but the amount of time and resources that go into managing the hive, extracting and bottling the honey, paying postage for 15 jars of honey, paying for a small run of bespoke labels, writing an individual quarterly e-update on the hive and providing certificates and free gifts etc actually means that we make virtually no profit on the scheme. It gives the customer a chance to support beekeepers and it gives us an up-front payment to cover our costs for that hive for the year. We are a small family business with a small apiary. When you look at some of the other adopt a hive schemes around I think most people would agree that ours is the only one that has a honest ethos and that ISN'T out to make a quick buck.
I hope that clears up some of your queries. Thanks for all your feedback. If you have any other thoughts please let me know.
Regards
Andy