Simplistic heather honey costs 2009

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Hombre

Queen Bee
Joined
Feb 27, 2009
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Location
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This year seems to have been very modest on the moors up and down the country, with the bees eschewing the supers and filling the brood boxes.

if you cost your travel at 30p per mile to and from your heather site for each visit you made, plus your site rental, divided by the weight of "heather" honey you have harvested from supers or by stripping brood boxes of available stores, what has been the cost per pound of your crop?

You might also like to also give a second figure after estimating an adjustment for a sugar syrup cost to replace stripped stores or general lightness of the brood box coming back from the moors. This should account for the shortfall in stores that you estimate occurred as a result of being on the moors rather than in their home apiary.

I think that there is possibly some very expensive Heather honey out there and wouldn't it be nice to know that a lot of people are in the same boat.

Perhaps Admin might like to reword my question and canvas cost bands per pound by way of a poll to keep it all generally anonymous. The intention after all is not to compromise anyone, but to figure out the state of the heather crop this year, so that we all know how it's been.
 
I took two hives up to Dartmoor but brought them back at the end of August as they were on the point of starvation. The weather then turned and September was near perfect so I will never know if I might have got a crop had I fed them in August and left them there for a couple of more weeks.

It is nearly an hour's drive from where I live to the site on Dartmoor so I doubt it was ever goiing to be economic - but I just wanted some heather honey.

I suspect even in a good year you need a reasonable number of hives (6 upwards?) to make it pay, depending of course on how far you have to travel.

There was a group of us and we all had the same experience. The plan was three visits, one to take them out, one in the middle and one to bring them back.
 
When I "did" heather the math was pretty simple, and that was the cost of sugar at the time, some 60p a pound and the price achieved for the honey less jar lid and label.

However there is a wee point being missed here and that is owning the equipment to extract from the brood combs.

If you are pressing, a long hot and very sticky job then you have to factor in the cost of replacement foundation, the difference between having drawn brood combs and just foundation, and the time involved in repairing and cleaning up frames for the insertion of foundation.

If you have a loosner then the cost of that machine has to be considered too. Mine cost me some £1400 at the time. Plus of course a tangential extractor is really needed.

It's not that simple really.

PH
 
Did you really pay 60p pound for suger,or is this an error,because we only pay 58p a kg now,and not long ago this was only 45p kg, so do you mean 22p lb.
 
Another thing you need to factor in is your time as well, bottling and so on if you wanted a realistic price. :cheers2:
 
Yes I was paying per kilo sorry a factor error. Which is to say 60 p per bag which at the time I got from Macro. Opening a tonne of bags to mix syrup was interesting but it made for good mixing LOL

PH
 

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