Supplementary Farmland Bird Feeding Project

12/20/2016 11:18:00 am 0 Comments

In partnership with other Oxfordshire farms, we’re conducting an experiment over the next few months to determine the best way to provide food to support farmland birds during the winter hungry gap. We’re comparing the effectiveness of growing wild bird plant mixtures, compared to regularly distributing extra supplementary bird food. Both of these feeding options are available as farmland stewardship options so we want to find out which has a more positive effect on farmland bird numbers.

The farmland stewardship options are part of the UK Government’s commitment to reversing the long-term decline in the number of farmland birds. The UK Farmland Bird Indicator is made up of 19 species that are dependent on farmland, and not able to thrive in other habitats. The turtle dove, grey partridge, corn bunting and tree sparrow have declined by over 80 per cent and the overall average change for the 19 species is a 48 per cent decline since 1970.

The aim of supplementary feeding is to provide a regular, constant source of food as a lifeline for farmland birds, all the way from early winter to mid spring.


At Honeydale the standard wild bird plant mixtures of seed bearing species like quinoa, fodder radish, cereals and mustard will be used as a control, to show the numbers of farmland bird species that use it as a food resource. We’ll also be looking at how long these plants provide seed into the winter months. Ideally, this resource would provide seed from December to March, however in reality they are often exhausted and depleted by mid winter.

Supplementary bird feeding is a newer idea, whereby farmers distribute bird seed regularly, in specific areas which are often within the blocks of wild bird plant mixtures.

We will monitor both the control plots and the supplementary feeding area to count the numbers of birds and diversity of bird species using the resource.

The supplementary feed will be distributed every 2-3 days to begin with and by late December it will be provided every day.

Richard Broughton of CEH conducts regular bird surveys at Honeydale and will be monitoring the effects of the project, while the day to day feeding programme will be handled by Cotswold Seeds’ Warehouse Manager Elliot May. Elliot has had a keen interest in birds for many years, so he jumped at the chance to take on the supplementary feeding project at Honeydale! Having a great eye for identifying bird species both feeding and on the wing, he is the ideal candidate.

This week Elliot hung up two large seed feeders in the blackthorn hedge, which will provide songbirds with protection from predators such as sparrowhawks. The feeders were filled with a Hungry Gap Mix from Well Fed Birds containing wheat, barley, black sunflowers, millet, red millet, canary seed and linseed. A ton of this seed has been purchased, to last for 100 days. Ground-feeding birds such as linnets, blackbirds and fieldfares are also being catered for. Ten kg of the seed was also hand-distributed over a strip of the Summer Quick Fix rapid cover mixture, an area of which was flattened as a feeding area several weeks ago.

Elliot observed blue tits, great tits and a solitary yellow hammer while he was setting up the feeders, but we hope to see more birds on the farm once they have had time to realise there is a regular food supply here. Watch this space!

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Wild Trout Trust Award

10/26/2016 09:22:00 am , 0 Comments

"Incredibly smart work" is how the judges of the Wild Trout Trust Conservation Awards described the Natural Flood Management at Honeydale Farm. Ian Wilkinson, farmer at Honeydale and MD of Cotswold Seeds, attended the awards ceremony at The Savile Club in London this week, along with other nominees. The Wild Trout Trust is a conservation charity that supports and encourages projects to improve and protect habitats in and around rivers and lakes, and nominees were chosen for their practical work to improve wetland habitats for trout and all wildlife across the UK and Ireland. 


The Natural Flood Management Scheme at Honeydale involved rerouting a natural spring to create a series of leaky dams and scrapes as well as the planting of trees to create wildlife habitats and help prevent flooding in the catchment area of the Evenlode River.

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We'll Bee Back

10/25/2016 11:07:00 am 0 Comments

Paul visited the Honeydale hives this week to check that the bees were busy preparing for the cold winter months. Due to the sunny weather they were still flying and making use of the remaining flowers on the farm Both of our WBC (traditional white) hives have strong colonies, they are are a little sluggish now due to the colder weather, which is to be expected, because of the temperature change. The good news is that both hives also have plenty of stores. Brood box stores are good in both the hives, and hive 2 also has almost a full super of honey to last the winter. Hive 1 has slightly less honey but we can always feed them fondant over the winter if necessary.

During the visit Paul also took the opportunity to fit slider mouse-guards to both hives to help prevent the risk of small mammals helping themselves to the bee's hard-earned honey as the weather gets cooler and they become more desperate for food.


Chris Wells’s 5 hives also seem to be doing well considering they were installed only a few months ago - it'll be next year before we expect to see a honey harvest from them.

Things don’t always go to plan though, and unfortunately we have a bit of bad news. The swarm box containing the small colony of bees we rescued from the apiary earlier in the season has collapsed and Paul was faced with a box of dead bees which was very sad to see and such a shame, especially considering we had previously discovered a laying queen in the box. This just goes to show how vulnerable small colonies can be and the importance of a good run-up to the winter to achieve a healthy population and good stores.

We’ll be checking in on all the surviving colonies in couple of weeks before the winter really sets in, to make sure they have everything they need.


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Woodland Trust Workshop Visits Honeydale

10/18/2016 12:52:00 pm , 0 Comments


A delegation from The Woodland Trust visited Honeydale Farm as part of its Oxfordshire Focus Area Workshop, looking at the region’s particular challenges and opportunities. They were joined by Alistair Yeomans of the Sylva Foundation and Sharon Williams, Wychwood Project Director and member of the Evenlode Catchment Partnership. The group were interested in the natural flood management project at Honeydale, and how it has involved the planting of trees and creation of areas of wetland to deliver NFM. Farmer and MD of Cotswold Seeds Ian Wilkinson along with manager Paul Totterdell discussed crop rotation, tree-planting and natural flood management in the wider context of diversity on the farm and how trees and water can be used as natural capital, bringing a range of benefits.


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Feed The Birds

10/04/2016 01:32:00 pm , , 0 Comments

There’s a nip of autumn in the air and British Summertime ends soon. But the birds at Honeydale are well catered for when winter sets in. We’ve planted two plots with winter bird food cover; a one year annual mix and two year autumn sown bumble bee mix which has another cycle to go. The fodder radish did particularly well and the mixes should provide plenty of food over the leaner months.


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Oats So Complicated

10/04/2016 11:07:00 am , 0 Comments

We are seeking a miller or the right equipment to process our oats.

Back in May we planted a small acreage of spring oats at Honeydale. We intended these to be a low cost and low input crop which would provide porridge oats, a wholesome, whole food product which we could then package, market and sell. The trouble is that since we harvested the oats, we’ve contacted several millers and none are interested in taking our relatively small tonnage.


The process of turning spring oats into porridge oats is fairly complicated. It involves removing the husk before steaming, rolling and milling. It seems that we’ll have no option now but to use the oats for animal feed, unless we can find a willing miller or small kit to buy so that we can do the whole processing ourselves.


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Buckwheat & Barley Mow

9/13/2016 09:27:00 am , , 0 Comments

A Novel Old Idea From Arthur Young

We’ve sown buckwheat as a companion crop for the herbal ley in the first reseed of our new mixed farming rotation. The large leaves of the buckwheat act like an umbrella, effectively shielding and protecting the new ley and stopping the sun burning down on the bare soil and drying it out fast as the seedlings come through. The buckwheat will then be killed off by winter frosts, leaving only the grass. It’s an ingenious method but it’s actually an old technique, observed and recorded by agricultural writer Arthur Young back in the 1800s.

Before sowing the grass we sowed the buckwheat at a rate of 20 kilos per acre. At this rate the buckwheat was open enough to leave space for the grass. If it was denser, the grass would be smothered and at 15 kilos per acre, our first sowing, it was too light.


Barley Mow

Our combine has been busy. We retained four acres of spring barley which we’ve managed just as the previous farmer at Honeydale had done in order to give a controlled measurement, against which to gauge changes we’re implementing. The yield was similar to the previous years at 1.5 tonnes per acre. As we only had 6 tonnes of grain we’ve delivered this to the neighbouring livestock farmer who will be able to mill and mix it for winter feed. Next up for combining are the spring oats which we hope to be able to make into porridge.

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Best Sown Plans...

9/05/2016 03:08:00 pm , , 0 Comments

Not everything goes to plan with farming, as we all know, and our second sainfoin field is a case in point. We planted two fields with sainfoin in May last year and one was successfully harvested for hay several weeks ago. We decided to plant the sainfoin with a companion crop of grass to suppress weeds and it established well.


The plan was to harvest seed from the second field this summer, but we ran into problems. Firstly, the sainfoin plants and seed heads were maturing at different rates making it hard to judge the best time to take a cut. The crop also proved to be very bulky and green due to the grass content so would have clogged up the combine. In the end we decided to simply cut and mulch it for soil improvement. It should regrow and re-flower again this year if the weather is fair and it is possible that we might take a late seed crop, and we’ll try again to take some seeds from it next year.


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Babees

9/05/2016 01:47:00 pm , 0 Comments

Another straightforward inspection was carried out today; things are looking good all round and we have added an additional super to each hive. The sainfoin is flowering amazingly well and is absolutely full of bees; not just honeybees but many different species, which is quite a sight to beehold!

There are always lots of baby bees hatching in a healthy hive, but on this visit it was very easy to see the eggs so it’s the perfect opportunity to show you what they look like! In the photo you can see the eggs, identified by some tiny white specks at the bottom of the cells (we've highlighted them to help you out).




After she has mated, the queen lays eggs in cells which have been polished by the worker bees in preparation, so polished cells can therefore be used as an indicator that the queen is laying eggs or is about to begin laying. You can see how well polished the cells are at Honeydale - look at the reflection from the cell walls! Eggs develop into larvae, initially being fed royal jelly and bee bread (a mixture of honey and pollen, amongst other things) to become worker bees, or pure royal jelly to become a queen bee.

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Bee Update

8/26/2016 01:30:00 pm , 0 Comments

Today's visit to the bees was thankfully quite straightforward, thanks to both hives and their queens being healthy and performing well. One noticeable point during today's inspection was the large amount of colourful pollen present. Some of the brood frames were almost completely covered in pollen stores.


Both queens are laying well and we are hoping that both colonies will forage a lot of nectar over the next few weeks, the weather looks good and the rain we've had should ensure the plants and flowers maintain their nectar flow. The swarm box is also stable and doing well, the illusive queen is still laying well and the bee numbers are increasing. We hope to introduce them to a 'National Hive' very soon so that they can start making provision for the winter months.

Another bonus this week is that our Sainfoin has begun it's second flush of flowering (having been cut for hay several weeks ago - let us know if you want some!!) so over the coming few weeks our bees will be spoiled. 


Add to this the various environmental mixtures we have planted in field corners (see the bumblebird mixture in the photo) which are doing well, and we should be able to take a second honey harvest later in the season.


Chris has high hopes for the sainfoin this year because we have a second field of sainfoin which has only just been cut in the last few days, so this too will be flowering in a few weeks (hopefully) giving the bees even more succession of pollen & nectar leading into the Autumn.

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Honeydale Honey

8/15/2016 03:07:00 pm 0 Comments


We have now filtered our first harvest of honey to remove any impurities, and after being allowed to settle for a week, the honey has been put into jars. We have chosen not to heat treat or pasteurise Honeydale Honey, so it will be raw and contain all of it's natural goodness. Although we’ve never planned to sell this first sample harvest, we can say that it tastes absolutely fantastic with a deliciously sweet, fresh and well-rounded flavour with a lovely light-golden colour, which all bodes 
well for the future. 


Paul’s regular inspection of the Honeydale beehives has also revealed that both are looking very healthy, with lots of eggs and both queens present. The frames, which were put back in the hive after harvesting the honey, are now squeaky clean thanks to the busy bees, and have been removed so that the foundation can be replaced and the frames reused in due course. The bees in both hives have also made a good start at filling their next super, so we are hoping to have a second harvest at the end of the season.

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Barn Owl Chicks

8/15/2016 09:42:00 am 0 Comments

We’re delighted to be able to provide a very positive news update on our barn owls. Two chicks in the Honeydale Farm nest box have now been ringed by Pat and Albert of the barn owl team of the Wychwood Project. They’re quite different sizes, with one much larger and therefore probably older than the other, but both are doing well. Evidence suggests that there were originally three chicks but unfortunately one has been lost - rather poignantly.

The exciting news about the two surviving chicks is tinged with sadness because we’ve lost the third member of the barn owl team, Ian Anderson, who died last month. Ian was so enthusiastic about this project and incredibly helpful, and the success of our owl breeding venture is a testament to him, Pat and Albert.


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Show Us The Honey

7/25/2016 02:30:00 pm 0 Comments

Delighted to report that, excitingly, we extracted the very first batch of honey from one of our original, and very full, Honeydale Farm hives (known as hive 1) this weekend.

A few days prior to extracting honey, it’s necessary to reduce the number of bees in the supers that are to be removed. The bees always return down to the brood box each day so in order to stop them going back up to the supers again, we put 'porter bee escapes' into the hive last week. These are small one-way valves which are fitted to the crown board which is positioned below the filled supers, and above the brood box.



On Sunday, I collected the three filled supers to be extracted, which equates to 30 frames.

The process for extraction is as follows:

1: Each frame has its two honeycomb faces 'uncapped' using a special 'uncapping knife' which is heated to make the process easier. The wax cappings melt in the uncapping tray and flow off to a separate bucket, where all the molten wax is collected later. This is very hot and sweaty work because the tray is heated by boiling water!

A super frame being 'uncapped'
Wax from the uncapping process before being melted by the tray
The wax capping melts and runs off into a bucket
2: Once uncapped, each frame is placed into a centrifuge extractor. When full, the centrifuge is carefully switched on and the speed is increased so that the honey is spun out of the honeycomb and runs to the bottom of the drum.

Centrifuge extractor
Almost full!
3: The tap at the bottom of the drum is opened and the honey runs out into a bucket.

Our first drop of Honeydale honey!
4: The honey is then sieved into a settling tank where, once settled, impurities rise to the top and the honey is decanted into jars from the tap at the bottom.

There was some crystallisation of the honey in some frames, probably because this was early season rapeseed honey. But this meant that some of the honey could not be spun out of the honeycomb in the same way. Instead, the honeycomb was cut out of the frame with a knife and put in a separate bucket. This bucket is then placed in a warming cabinet so that the crystals melt, the honey liquefies and naturally separates from the wax. After a few days the wax is removed and the honey can be mixed with the rest of the extracted honey before being put into the settling tank.

The buckets in the warming cabinet
Once it has settled we will put the honey into jars one day later this week.

Bees are such amazing creatures and they let nothing go to waste. After extraction we are obviously left with lots of sticky, messy frames. These are put back into the hives and the bees clean up the mess for us, making use of all the leftover honey and wax. In a week or so I will remove these clean frames and fit new foundation ready for them to be used again.

Photos of Honeydale honey pots to follow very soon - we can’t wait!

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Barn Owl Chicks at Honeydale

7/20/2016 03:41:00 pm 0 Comments

Thrilling news from the latest Honeydale Farm bird survey. There are Barn Owls chicks in the nestbox. Our birdman, Richard Brougton from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, observed that both parents are bringing in food and chicks can be heard hissing in the box (so must be fairly big already). There's hatched eggshell underneath the nestbox. 


Honeydale Farm is proving to be a great hunting ground for Barn Owls. Two of the grass fields have recently been mown, which has given the owls a temporary glut of prey (as the voles are exposed) and one of the owl parents is also regularly hunting in the long grass in the orchard and catching a lot of prey (3 voles in half an hour!). Leaving this grass long until the autumn will give the owls a stable hunting ground for the duration of rearing the chicks and we’ll also be leaving wide margins of long grass after mowing in order to maintain a good supply of voles.

There are also huge numbers of butterflies on the farm at the moment, especially Meadow Browns. Richard says he doesn’t think he’s ever seen so many. The uncut strip of herbal ley in one of the arable fields is teeming with butterflies. Richard also saw a Marbled White, which might be a new species here. We’ll be looking into conducting a butterfly survey to compare with the baseline figures gathered when we first took over the farm.

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Long Live The Queens

7/20/2016 09:39:00 am 0 Comments

When we carried out our weekly inspection of the seven hives at Honeydale Farm we made some exciting discoveries.

Hive two is doing well. Although the bees have not really started to fill their first super, the queen is laying eggs and bee numbers look good.

Hive 1 (pictured below) is doing so well that we’ve added yet another super, bringing the total to four now, so the hive is looking very tall. The picture to the right shows the 4 internal 'supers', while the picture below shows the hive fully constructed with it's outer 'lifts'.



We found the queen again (we found her last time but didn’t want to disturb her) and have clipped her wing and marked her with a white spot. This means that both hives now have marked queens which are healthy and laying well. Hopefully the warm weather this week should allow the bees to get busy again and fill some more supers.

We will be taking our very first harvest of honey next week and we can’t wait for our first taste of Honeydale Farm Honey.




Thrillingly, the swarm box now has a queen! We opened it up today and Chris' hunch about their calm behaviour has proven to be spot on, even though it’s taken quite a long time for us to confirm (no pictures yet, sorry!). We didn’t actually see the queen but there are freshly laid eggs in the honeycomb which means a queen is definitely present. We added another empty brood frame to give the bees more space to build honeycomb. If all goes well we should be able to make another colony from this swarm box in due course.

Chris' newly installed hives are also looking good and all have settled in nicely. It’s interesting to see the difference between his 5 hives though, even in the space of a week. Three of the them are developing slowly, with plenty of space left in their brood box for the bees to fill. The other two hives are far more advanced and already need supers adding to them. This just goes to show how variable the colonies can be.

Chris carries out the first inspection on his 5 'National' hives
All the black pollen in this frame shows the bees have been foraging on poppy pollen

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NewBees

7/07/2016 04:02:00 pm 0 Comments

Chris Wells has been at Honeydale today settling his bees into their new hives. He brought five colonies in nuc boxes last week and let them acclimatise to their new surroundings before installing the hives. Now the hives have been built, the frames have been successfully transferred from the nuc boxes and the bees have been given a supply of sugar syrup to tide them over until they have built up their own supply of honey. They’ve already been making good use of the abundance of wildflowers at Honeydale. Several of the females were spotted returning with pollen sacks filled with bright yellow pollen and there is an abundance of distinctive black pollen on the frames too, showing that the bees are foraging on poppies. Chris found queens in four of the five boxes and the fifth is displaying plenty of brood, so all is good. The hives will be left alone until next week when Chris will come back to check progress.


We also carried out an inspection on our own two hives. You may remember in the last update that Hive 1, although producing a good amount of honey, was missing it’s queen and we could not identify any eggs, however the bees were behaving quite calmly, and were polishing brood cells, suggesting there was a queen somewhere soon to be fertilised. The great news is that we have found freshly laid eggs meaning there must be a queen present and she most likely has only recently returned from her mating flights and started laying. As soon as we found the eggs (after celebrating a little) we closed the hive - we’ll let her carry on laying eggs for now and mark her with a white dot next inspection. In hive 2, the newly marked queen has continued to lay eggs, there is a great brood pattern on many of the frames and things are looking great. Things are looking less hopeful for our swarm box which has no brood, indicating that there’s no queen present and the box is likely to be vacated eventually. We are considering starting a new colony from these bees by introducing a new queen.

Looking forward to next week’s inspection when Chris’s Cotswold Bees should have started to feel at home. We’re now delighted to have seven beehives at Honeydale Farm.


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A Hive Of Activity

6/27/2016 04:23:00 pm 0 Comments

The Honeydale bees have been busy! Paul and Chris Wells carried out an inspection today and discovered that the ‘special measures’ hive has reacted well to the new queen, introduced earlier this month. She is healthy, laying lots of eggs and with plenty of brood present...


...so she’s been marked (white for 2016)...


and had her wings clipped.



All is looking very good and a mass of beautifully coloured pollen has been collected.


Some of the bees have deformed wing virus.


This is not unusual, but is an indicator that some varroa is present. The bottom board of the hive was checked and varroa was found, along with wax moth grubs, so this will be kept under supervision and may have to be treated for varroa.

Hive 1 (to which we added several additional supers) has now produced an impressive 30kg of honey so far [see pic], with some perfect honey-filled frames.



No queen, eggs or brood were visible though, but the calm temperament within the hive suggests the queen is not too far away and is still active. The colony have polished a lot of cells which usually means they are preparing for the queen to lay eggs. Another inspection will be carried out at the end of the week to see if she can be found.

The swarm box is still confusing us. It has a healthy number of bees but no brood or eggs. However the bees are displaying a healthy temperament so it’ll be left for another week and inspected again. It may be necessary to introduce eggs into this hive to stimulate the bees to create a new queen and it may then be possible to develop a new colony from this swarm we’ll have to watch this space.


The Honeydale bees already have company, as Chris Wells has now brought some of his bees up to the farm. There are currently four nucleus boxes there, with more to follow.


Once the bees have acclimatised they will be transferred to some more permanent national hives at the end of the week. Having seen the honey production from our hives, Chris is very enthusiastic about having his hives at Honeydale and looking forward to lots of honey.

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