Wimbish Honeyhouse has a reputation that reaches far beyond the boundaries of Essex. All Honeyhouse honeys are absolutely pure, with nothing added or taken out. Many Honeyhouse customers who have moved from the area still make long journeys back to bulk purchase.
Creamed honey is made from the first harvest of the year, consisting of mainly spring flowers, top-fruit and stone-fruit, oil seed rape and field been. Most honeys will eventually crystallize after extraction and rape honey does so very rapidly. In a matter of weeks it can turn from liquid to rock hard, and if bottled immediately from the extractor is very difficult to use. Honeyhouse honey has been mechanically creamed, making it easy to spread. Creamed honey is suitable for spreading on fresh bread or toast, or using as a sweetener in tea and coffee.
Clear honey is a later extraction, consisting of nectar from garden flowers and tree flowers such as Lime. Some years we are fortunate to have either Echium (Viper's Bugloss) or Borage growing in the surrounding fields.
Beeswax is a much-valued by-product of the hive. It has many uses. Honeyhouse has hand-made pure beeswax candles, beeswax polish and beeswax cream polish. We also sell beeswax in one-ounce sticks.
Propolis is not easy to harvest in any quantity - hence its rarity value. Bees forage for tree sap and use this as 'bee glue', an antiseptic sealer and varnish to polish the interior of a cell before the queen lays a new egg in it. Propolis may be purchased from healthfood multiples in capsule form as a vitamin supplement, but ours is 100% the real thing, and may be used to treat mouth and throat infections. Stradivarius used propolis in his violin varnish, and some say it was this that gave the instruments their distinctive sound.
Pollen may be harvested by putting traps on the hive entrance to scrape the pollen from the foragers' back legs. Pollen is needed to feed the young brood, so its removal can have an effect on colony growth. We take great care to ensure that it doesn't within our apiary. However, because of this, pollen is supplied by special order only.