John Mellis' Honey Farm

“We work up to sixteen hours a day, seven days a week for around seven months each year, otherwise it’s brilliant.  I simply love being out on the hills with the sound of happily working bees around me.”

On a winding back lane at Auldgirth are the fruits of fifteen million worker bees, capably supported by John Mellis and his partner Joan, who work nearly as hard.

John and Joan will welcome you to a whitewashed converted byre to show you how and where some of Britain’s very highest quality honey is produced.  All around is birdsong and the sound of the river – and bees.  The flower-covered hills and glens of south west Scotland provide 350 hives of bees with their occupation, allowing John to produce many distinct types of honey, the main ones being: Spring honey made early in the year from trees; Blossom honey from flowers in high summer; Heath and Wildflower honey from wild flowers on higher land; and a magnificent Heather honey from moorland belonging to the Duke of Buccleuch.   John pays his rent in jars of honey.

Bees forage in the flowers for nectar and store it in their hive within wooden racks of waxy honeycomb.  The nectar becomes honey in the hive and is bee food designed to see the colony through winter.  As the honey is removed, John feeds his bees in winter on a specially made ambrosia syrup.

During summer John works a sixteen hour day, sometimes starting at 4am because the bees fly at dawn and must be moved to the moors during the night in readiness for morning.  During a good summer the bees can fill a hive with honey in a matter of days.

Once a honey-laden super is brought back to the farm Joan takes over.  Each honeycomb is placed in the extractor, which spins with the speed gradually increasing for ten minutes at up to 280rpm.  The honey runs into a bucket and is filtered before bottling.

And, of course, it tastes wonderful