YATTENDON HONEY
Sustainable Beekeeping in West Berkshire
YATTENDON HONEY
Yattendon Honey is a small scale beekeeping operation located in West Berkshire. Colonies are managed at the apiary in the most sustainable way possible. Despite our name, the aim of the apiary is to support local environmental stewardship schemes by locating a small number of colonies next to newly created habitats that support a range of local flora and fauna.
COLONY MANAGEMENT
Natural Beekeeping
The beekeeping approach used by Yattendon Honey is called checkerboarding. This approach prevents swarming and is less intrusive than traditional methods of beekeeping. The local flora of the Yattendon Estate provides a fantastic location for the bees to thrive.
Unlike commercial beekeeping operations we limit the number of colonies to prevent detrimental competition with other pollinators. We also retain as much honey with the bees as they can possibly use. Where there is a surplus that the bees cannot defend, or where keeping it on the hive would cause unnecessary swarming; we remove this honey as a surplus. Where it is not required by the colony as stores for over wintering we extract the honey and cold filter it prior to bottling. This retains the natural properties of the honey.
It is sold locally in small amounts from late summer onwards.
QUALITY
We are one of very few non-commercial beekeepers that are registered with the local authority as a food producer. We are proud to confirm that we have a 5 star premises rating for our honey extracton and bottling. This ensures that the honey that is extracted is of the best quality possible.
