Tandc_honey_bees

27/11/2025

🐝✨ LUXURY BEE HAMPERS – LIMITED AVAILABILITY ✨🐝
Proper gifts. Real honey. No nonsense.

Handcrafted, local, and packed with bee-themed goodness, our luxury hampers are designed to impress and disappear fast.

🌻 THE FORAGER – £25
A charming little treat with honey, soap, lip balm & wax melts.

🍯 THE HIVE – £45
Our most popular box – generous, beautiful and finished with a sunflower keyring.

👑 THE QUEEN – £75
The ultimate luxury hamper – including chilli honey, cut comb, hex candle, soap dish & sunflower keyring. Fit for royalty.

🎨 Make it yours
Flavours of soaps, lip balms and lotions can be changed to suit the customer.

👀 View them this weekend at:
• Ibstone School Fayre
• Stokenchurch School Fayre
• The Lambert Arms Pub

📩 Or order direct via message
Very limited numbers available – once they’re gone, they’re gone.

Old-school quality. Modern charm. Serious buzz. 🐝🔥

22/11/2025

🐝 REAL HONEY. REAL WRAPS. NO NONSENSE.

Straight from hardworking British bees to your kitchen — proper honey the old-fashioned way. No shortcuts. No syrupy scams. Just golden goodness that tastes how honey should.

🍯 Raw Local Honey
• Smooth Honey – £8 a jar
• Chunky / Creamed Honey – £10 a jar
• Cut Comb Honey – £8 a block
Fun fact (and slightly bonkers): the bees fly around 55,000 miles to make just one jar. That’s not honey… that’s dedication in a jar.

🌿 Beeswax Food Wraps
Ditch the plastic like it’s 1999. These reusable wraps keep food fresh, breathe naturally, and smell faintly of sweet victory.
• Small 20x20cm – £5
• Large 30x30cm – £7

✅ Plastic-free
✅ Eco-friendly
✅ Made by bees with a frightening level of commitment

🚚 FREE local delivery
📍 Or collect from Stokenchurch – wave at the hive VIPs.

Support your local beekeeper. Upgrade your lunch. Outclass cling film.

🐝 Go on… your sandwiches deserve royalty.
📦 Order now – before the bees start charging mileage.

10/11/2025

Embrace sustainability in your kitchen with our eco-friendly beeswax food wraps. These reusable wraps are perfect for keeping your food fresh while reducing plastic waste, making every meal a step towards a greener planet. Buy yours now.
www.tchoneybee.co.uk

08/11/2025

🍯 Ever wondered why it's called a HONEYMOON? 🌙

Here's the sweet truth: Back in the day, newlyweds were gifted honey (the ultimate luxury!) to sweeten their first month together. Hence "honey" + "moon" = honeymoon! 🐝✨

And honestly? We're still here making that magic happen — just with *real* honey from *real* bees. 😉

Whether you're celebrating love, starting something new, or just need a taste of golden sweetness, our locally-made honey is the perfect companion. No artificial stuff. No reselling. Just pure, hive-to-jar goodness.

🛒 Shop Now:
- Runny Honey — £8
- Chunky Honey — £10
- Cut Comb — £8

www.tchoneybee.co.uk/shop 🍯💛

04/11/2025

Our Chunky Honey is as natural as it gets — raw honeycomb cut straight from the frame and submerged in pure Chiltern honey.

Each jar contains hand-cut sections of capped comb, made by our own bees and filled with nectar from wildflowers and hedgerows around the Thames & Chiltern Hills. The result? A rich, textured honey bursting with floral flavour, natural enzymes, and that signature waxy chew you only get from real comb.

Perfect as a gift, a showpiece on your breakfast table, or simply to remind yourself what real honey tastes like.

🍯 100% British
🐝 Made by our own bees
🚫 No blending, no heating, no additives
💛 £10 per jar

27/10/2025

🐝 5⭐️ Overwinter Nucs – Ready for 2026 Season!

Thames & Chiltern Honey Bees

Start or expand your beekeeping journey with confidence — our premium 5-frame overwinter nucs are calm, productive, and bursting with healthy bees for the spring ahead.

Each nuc includes:
✅ F1 Buckfast or Carniolan queen (blue marked 2025)
✅ Brood in all stages + stores
✅ Calm, hygienic bees with low swarm tendency
✅ Varroa-treated, supplied in correx box
✅ Collection from OX39 or next-day delivery 🚚

National Nuc: £270
Langstroth Nuc: £290
Postage: £30 (Royal Mail Next Day)

💷 Deposit only – remaining balance due before collection/postage
📅 Non-refundable after February 1st

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

> “Very good purchase. NUCs were full to bursting. Bees are very quiet and easy to handle. Wouldn’t hesitate to buy again.” – Laura D.

> “Got my bees into their hive easily, they’ve settled great and are bringing in pollen. Couldn’t have asked for a calmer colony.” – Melvyn G.

> “Thank you for the lovely bees and for being so helpful about collecting them.” – Heather A.

🐝 Don’t miss out — secure your 2026 overwinter nucs today!

26/10/2025

⏰ Clocks Go Back, Winter Prep Ramps Up for Honey Bees! 🐝
​It's that time of year again—the clocks have gone back, giving us that extra hour of morning light but also signalling that winter is truly on its way.
​With temperatures dipping down to 8^\circ\text{C} or colder, our incredible honey bees have transitioned fully into their winter mode. They've formed a tight winter cluster inside the hive, huddling together to generate and conserve heat. The queen is at the centre, surrounded by the worker bees who rotate from the warm inner core to the cooler outer layer to keep the whole colony alive.
​🚨 The Winter Threat: Unwanted Visitors
​While the bees are clustered and focused on survival, they are less able to defend the full volume of the hive. This is exactly when beekeepers need to be on high alert for a sneaky, furry foe: mice.
​These small rodents are also looking for a warm, dry place to spend the winter, and a beehive is a perfect target. Once inside, a mouse will happily build a nest and begin to hibernate, waking up periodically to snack on the precious honeycomb stores the bees worked so hard to fill. Not only does this steal their food, but the mess and damage can stress the colony and lead to diseases or death.
​What Beekeepers Do:
​To keep the hive safe while the bees are vulnerable, many beekeepers install mouse guards or entrance reducers. These are small metal screens or wooden blocks that restrict the size of the hive entrance just enough to let the bees pass freely but keep out the larger, destructive pests.
​Have you ever tried beekeeping, or do you have any favourite autumn rituals for preparing for the cold weather? Let us know in the comments! 👇

23/10/2025

We're currently battling through Storm Benjamin, bringing us some seriously strong winds and heavy rain! 🌧️💨

Secure Your Hives!

This kind of weather poses a real threat to our busy little bees and their homes. It's critical to make sure your hives are securely strapped down.

Why Strap Down Your Hives?
* Prevent Tipping and Collapse: High winds can easily catch the sides of a hive, especially those with supers or that are top-heavy, leading to the entire structure tipping over. This could crush the colony, expose the brood to the cold and wet, and cause your bees to drown or freeze.

* Keep the Roof On: Strong gusts can lift the roof right off your hive. This exposes the colony to the torrential rain, which can chill and kill the bees, wash away their food stores, and lead to mold and disease.

* Maintain Hive Integrity: The wind can shift the different boxes (brood box, supers) relative to one another, potentially opening gaps. This breaks the bees' heat seal, letting in cold air and rain, and making it much harder for the colony to maintain the temperature needed for the brood.

A single ratchet strap around the entire vertical stack (from the floor to the roof) is usually enough to keep everything secure.

Stay safe out there, and protect your bees! Let us know how your colonies are weathering the storm in the comments below! 👇

22/10/2025

Autumn is a critical time for UK bees, and fondant can be a lifesaver! 🐝 As natural forage dwindles, giving your colony fondant (sugar paste) provides them with essential emergency energy.
Why Fondant is Important in Autumn
* Emergency Stores: Even well-provisioned hives can run low if there's an unexpected long spell of bad weather or if their stores were not as heavy as they seemed. Fondant serves as a quick-access carbohydrate boost when they can't fly out.
* Preventing Starvation: It helps prevent the colony from starving through the lean months, ensuring they have the strength to survive winter.
* Gentle Feeding: Unlike syrup, solid fondant poses no risk of drowning for the bees and doesn't encourage robbing from other colonies or wasps, making it safer for late-season feeding.
How to Feed Fondant
* Prepare the Fondant: Use a good quality, bee-specific fondant. You can often buy it in ready-to-use blocks.
* Placement:
* On the Crown Board: The easiest method is to place the block directly over the feeder hole in your crown board (the inner cover of the hive). You might want to score the fondant block a little to give the bees an easier starting point.
* On the Frames: For direct access, you can also place the fondant block directly on top of the frames, centered over the cluster of bees.
* Use Greaseproof Paper (Optional but Recommended): Place a piece of greaseproof paper or an empty fondant wrapper under the fondant block to prevent it from sticking to the frames or crown board, and to make it easier to remove any uneaten portions later.
* Cover the Fondant: Ensure the fondant is covered by the hive roof to keep it dry and protected from pests.
* Monitor: Check periodically to see if the fondant is being consumed and replace it as needed.
Check your hives and consider placing a block of good quality bee-specific fondant. You're helping your bees get through to spring! 🌱

25/08/2025

When you have a sweet tooth, but in bulk. And the bees have a very sweet tounge. So, this should last around 2 weeks

18/07/2025