Matley Honey Co

14/06/2026

🐝 The June Gap… or as beekeepers often call it, “the dearth.” 🌸

Just when you think the bees should be bringing in bucketloads of nectar, nature likes to throw them a little curveball.

The June Gap is the period between the end of many spring blossoms and the start of the main summer forage. While gardens still look colourful to us, nectar and pollen sources can become surprisingly scarce. For a rapidly growing colony with thousands of hungry mouths to feed, this can be a challenging time.

A colony can grow from around 5,000–10,000 bees during winter to 50,000–80,000 bees at the height of summer, so their food requirements increase dramatically. Imagine catering for a small village that suddenly turns into a football stadium! 🍯

So what do beekeepers do?

🐝 Monitor colony food stores carefully
🐝 Make sure the bees have enough space to grow
🐝 Keep a close eye on colony health and queen performance
🐝 Provide supplementary feeding if necessary
🐝 Resist the urge to take honey too early and leave the bees with what they need

The aim is simple: keep the colonies strong, healthy and ready for the summer nectar flow when the lime trees, brambles, clover and other summer flowers really get going.

If all goes to plan, the bees will come through the dearth in great shape and reward us with plenty of that lovely local honey later in the season. 🍯🤞

So if you’ve got a garden, even a small one, every flowering plant helps. What might look like “just a few flowers” to us could be a lifeline to a hungry bee.

Support our bees, support our planet.

🐝 Champions of real honey 🍯

13/06/2026

🌧️🐝 What do beekeepers do on a miserable rainy day?

Paint supers, of course!

Whilst the bees are tucked up indoors waiting for better weather, I’ve been busy giving some honey supers a fresh coat of paint and getting them ready for the summer nectar flow.

For anyone wondering, these are the boxes that sit on top of the hive where the bees store surplus honey. With a bit of luck, good weather, and plenty of flowers, these empty boxes will be packed full of golden honey by the end of August. 🍯

What’s particularly exciting is that these could hold some of the very first batches of honey produced by our own colonies at the new apiaries. It’s always a strange feeling looking at a stack of empty wooden boxes and imagining them weighing a ton in a few months’ time because they’re full of honey!

Of course, the bees haven’t been informed of my plans yet. They’ll no doubt have their own ideas and spend the next few weeks keeping me guessing. 😂

For now, it’s paint brushes instead of hive tools, but hopefully before long it’ll be extracting equipment and sticky fingers!

Roll on some sunshine! ☀️🐝🍯

MATLEY Honey Co
Champions of Real Honey 🍯🐝

12/06/2026

🍯 AVAILABLE THIS WEEKEND 🐝

⭐ Ashtree Honey (SK15 – Stalybridge)
Our BEST SELLER! A beautiful local honey with a flavour that’s won over hundreds of customers.

🐝 Turrets Honey (M33 – Sale)
My personal favourite. Smooth, distinctive and absolutely delicious.

🏆 Dan & The Bees Honey (M6 – Salford)
Awarded not one, but TWO STARS at the 2025 Great Taste Awards! If the judges loved it, there’s a good chance you will too.

🌄 Hillside Honey (SK13 – Hadfield)
An award-winning dark and rich honey with a bold flavour profile that really stands out from the crowd.

All our honey is:
✅ 100% Pure
✅ Raw & Unpasteurised
✅ Locally Produced
✅ Harvested by Our Bees

If you’d like to get your hands on a jar, drop us a message. Collection available from home (SK14 4GP)
1/2lb jars £7 each / 1lb jars £14 each
Cash 💴 card 💳 transfer 💸
Or through one of our stockists.
5 A Day Stalybridge
Old Mill Farm Shop.
Village pet foods
village store

Your sinuses might thank you… and even if they don’t, your toast certainly will! 🍞🍯😂

12/06/2026

🤧 RED POLLEN WARNING ACROSS GREATER MANCHESTER! 🤧

The Met Office has issued an extremely high pollen alert, and if you’re one of the many people already suffering with itchy eyes, sneezing fits and a nose that’s running faster than a swarm in June… it might be time to give LOCAL honey a try! 🍯🐝

While we can’t make any medical claims, many hayfever sufferers swear by consuming local honey as part of their daily routine. The theory is simple – local honey contains tiny amounts of pollen collected by bees from plants growing in your area, helping some people gradually build up a tolerance over time.

Whether it works for you or not, you’ll still get to enjoy some absolutely fantastic pure, raw local honey! 😋

🍯 Currently available:

⭐ Ashtree Honey (SK15 – Stalybridge)
Our BEST SELLER! A beautiful local honey with a flavour that’s won over hundreds of customers.

🐝 Turrets Honey (M33 – Sale)
My personal favourite. Smooth, distinctive and absolutely delicious.

🏆 Dan & The Bees Honey (M6 – Salford)
Awarded not one, but TWO STARS at the 2025 Great Taste Awards! If the judges loved it, there’s a good chance you will too.

🌄 Hillside Honey (SK13 – Hadfield)
An award-winning dark and rich honey with a bold flavour profile that really stands out from the crowd.

All our honey is:
✅ 100% Pure
✅ Raw & Unpasteurised
✅ Locally Produced
✅ Harvested by Our Bees

If you’d like to get your hands on a jar, drop us a message. Collection available from home (SK14 4GP)
1/2lb jars £7 each / 1lb jars £14 each
Cash 💴 card 💳 transfer 💸
Or through one of our stockists.
5 A Day Stalybridge
Old Mill Farm Shop.
Village pet foods
Bee’s Coffee Pot
village store

Your sinuses might thank you… and even if they don’t, your toast certainly will! 🍞🍯😂

09/06/2026

🐝 Apiary Update – A swarm, a mystery, and a new queen on the way! 🐝

I’ve just done a quick video update from our Hyde apiary, where one of the colonies has been keeping me busy.

I already knew this hive had swarmed recently, with the old queen leaving the colony along with a large number of worker bees to start a new home elsewhere. Swarming is the honey bee colony’s natural way of reproducing, although it can leave the beekeeper with a few headaches! 😅

What had me scratching my head was the cluster of bees hanging underneath the hive. At first, I wondered whether they were attempting something unusual, but after a thorough inspection I couldn’t find a queen, any eggs, or any evidence that they were trying to establish a colony there.

So I’ve come to the conclusion that they were simply loitering under the hive… probably discussing ways to further test my patience. 🤦‍♂️🐝

Inside the hive, I found several queen cells, which is exactly what you’d expect after a swarm. The colony is attempting to raise a replacement queen from one of the developing larvae.

I’ve reduced the number of queen cells and moved one into a mating nuc in my garden. This gives me a potential spare queen for later in the season while leaving the colony with a queen cell of its own.

The challenge is time.

If I let nature take its course, we’d be waiting for a queen to emerge, mature, successfully mate, begin laying, and then another 21 days before new worker bees start emerging. That’s a long brood break during one of the busiest periods of the beekeeping season.

So after a chat with the fantastic Emma Buckley from Buckley’s Bees, I’ve arranged for a mated British Black Queen to join the colony. 👑🐝

The plan is to introduce her this weekend, giving the hive a laying queen almost immediately and helping the colony build back up much faster after the swarm.

Beekeeping is often sold as jars of honey and sunny afternoons. The reality is usually detective work, contingency plans, and occasionally trying to understand the thought process of 50,000 insects that don’t read the same books as you! 😂

I’ll keep you all updated once the new queen arrives and settles into her new kingdom.

MATLEY Honey Co
Champions of Real Honey






fans

08/06/2026

Not my petition - but I’m glad it’s active and I’ve signed it. STOP TAMESIDE COUNCIL USING WEEDKILLER THAT IS HARMFUL TO WILDLIFE!
Take a minute and sign it please guys 🐝

Stop Tameside Council from using glyphosate

07/06/2026

We’ve BEEn to relocate a colony of bees that had set up home in a compost bin.!..!.
It’s gone really well.
We managed to get most of the comb they’d build into frames that have gone into a hive. Cleaned up as best we could. Sealed the compost bin so they can’t get back in - which they really want to as that’s all they’ve known as their home/front door.
The hive will stay there until late this evening to allow the rest of the bees that aren’t already inside to make their own way in their new home. We’ll then pick it up and bring it back with us.
🐝