Balerno Honey

Balerno Honey Our bees produce honey from the woods, meadows and heather moors near Balerno and the Pentlands.

25/04/2026

Superfans!
This colony was running out of space, so I transferred into a large hive. Bees work as a team so when this happens they stick their bums in the air and fan nanosov glands to create a scent trail. This helps any workers puzzled by the sudden change in hive appearance to find their way back home.

21/03/2026

Sun is out, time to gather pollen! Catkins, dandelions, crocuses all produce different colours - you can tell where the foragers have been by looking at the ‘pollen baskets’ on their legs.

This will be chewed up and turned into ‘bee bread’ by the nurse bees - concentrated protein superfood to feed the newly emerging bees as the days warm up and queens accelerate their laying, to build up the workforce in time for the main spring nectar flow in May.

This hive still had its winter entrance guard on which had caused lots of pollen loads to fall off on the way into the hive - the bright orange and yellow bits on the right.

After a pretty grim January it was wonderful evening last week talking to the Balerno Scottish Women's Institutes group ...
10/02/2026

After a pretty grim January it was wonderful evening last week talking to the Balerno Scottish Women's Institutes group about bees - and what really goes into a jar of local honey.

Fantastic audience - great questions about everything from how bees communicate, and the unique qualities of Scottish heather honey.

They very kindly gifted me a book on Balerno's history too - a lovely touch from a group that clearly cares about their community.

A bit of a departure from my usual posts about bees and flowers, but I wanted to share something I've been working on.Ab...
07/12/2025

A bit of a departure from my usual posts about bees and flowers, but I wanted to share something I've been working on.
About a year ago – in fact I think it was a rainy Sunday afternoon exactly like this one –bees all tucked up for winter, honey all jarred up, no beekeeping to be done – when I got a random urge to learn computer coding.

A completely alien world for me after a spending a lifetime in languages, journalism and environmental policy. Or perhaps a dormant seed planted by my mum who was a software engineer back when very simple computers occupied whole warehouses and programmes were inputted with punched cardboard tape.

Anyway, it's been a year of late evenings figuring out everything from javascript functions, databases, payment systems and shipping integrations. Plenty of moments wondering if I'd bitten off more than I could chew.

And finally… the result!

What I've built is finelocalhoney.co.uk – a marketplace platform that will connect people around the country with genuine local honey producers.

Balerno Honey is on there today and over the coming months I'll be reaching out to artisan honey producers around Scotland and beyond.

By the summer, I hope everyone in the UK will have a quick and easy way to find fantastic honey, produced in their local area.

Underwhelming perhaps, the ivy is not known for ostentatious floral display. Most people don’t actually realise ivy has ...
15/10/2025

Underwhelming perhaps, the ivy is not known for ostentatious floral display. Most people don’t actually realise ivy has flowers at all. But look closely from now to November and ivy is blooming with gusto.

As the last major food plant before winter, ivy is crucial for pollinators. The bees need it first winter stores so I would never harvest the honey, but those who have tried the honey describe it euphemistically as ‘an acquired taste’.

Skies full of lava yesterday evening over the Pentlands. A fitting finale to the season as the last of the noble heather...
20/09/2025

Skies full of lava yesterday evening over the Pentlands.

A fitting finale to the season as the last of the noble heather fades into autumn. Or possibly a harbinger of the toil and tears to come; that means it’s now time to get the heather press set up and start wrestling the honey from comb to jar.

Heather is unique in many ways - like Manuke, extremely high in antioxidants and also certain minerals like manganese. And chemically different, with a gel-like structure that means in must be extracted by pressing rathe than siding a spinner to do the hard work.

What a funny summer. Warm, settled, not too dry (at least for the first half). But everything was a little out of synch ...
14/09/2025

What a funny summer. Warm, settled, not too dry (at least for the first half). But everything was a little out of synch with the main nectar flows unusually early.

This gorgeous stand of Rosebay Willowherb by the old Doocot in Balerno was thronging with bees of all shapes and sizes when i snapped this photo but there was very little honey to show for it in the hives.

Fortunately the other two Balerno honey seasons - spring and, just finishing, the ling heather up in the Pentlands - were abundant so there will be no shortage this year.

The road to heather honey is fraught with pain and suffering. The fickleness ofthe nectar flow - which stops and starts ...
16/08/2025

The road to heather honey is fraught with pain and suffering. The fickleness ofthe nectar flow - which stops and starts at random, putting the bees in bad temper - and the challenging logistics.

And then, if there is some honey at the end of it all, horrendous job of pressing the combs (it does not ‘spin out’ like other honey, being thixatropic in form and not a liquid).

All worth it in the end though for a very very special honey. Less hyped than Manuka, but far superior in my (biased) opinion.

We had a wonderful morning recently with children from Niddrie Mill and Castelview primary schools. Part of a series of ...
25/07/2025

We had a wonderful morning recently with children from Niddrie Mill and Castelview primary schools. Part of a series of pollinator themed events that we ran in partnership with the National Literacy Trust and a corporate sponsor.

The children had clearly put in the reading - I was seriously impressed by how knowledgeable they already were, their willingness to get hands on, and the insightfulness of their questions. Looking forward to doing more schools events in future.

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Balerno
Edinburgh
EH14

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