Stories from the hive. Market days, producer visits, the occasional thought.
We had one of those days at Glebe Markets where everything just clicked. The weather was perfect — that early autumn light that makes Sydney look like a postcard — and we sold out of the Yellow Box by 11am. We'd brought extra this week after the run on it last month. Didn't matter. Gone by mid-morning.
The creamed honey has been consistently our most-asked-about product. People pick it up, press the lid, feel the texture through the glass, and then just put it in their bag without asking the price. That's when you know something is right.
We're planning a proper visit to the Bellingen property in a few weeks to see how the Manuka hives are coming along after the summer. Will try to document it properly. More soon.
We get asked this a lot at markets. Raw honey is honey that hasn't been pasteurised or finely filtered. That sounds simple but in practice it matters a lot.
Most commercial honey is heated to 70°C+ to slow crystallisation and make it easier to pump through industrial equipment. That process destroys most of the enzymes, some of the antioxidants, and the pollen — which is actually how you identify the botanical source. It also means every jar of the same supermarket brand is identical, regardless of where or when it was harvested.
Our honey is extracted cold, strained through a coarse mesh to remove wax and debris, and that's it. Which is why it crystallises over time (that's a sign of quality, not spoilage), why the colour and flavour vary between batches, and why it actually tastes like something.
We launched in March and we're almost at the end of our first full year. Here's what we didn't expect: the people who buy at markets are overwhelmingly regulars. By June we had customers who came every single weekend and bought something almost every time. That's not something you can manufacture with marketing. It's product.
The other thing: the questions people ask at markets are the best product research you can do. "Does this one crystallise?" "Is this one good for allergies?" "Can I give this to my toddler?" We've answered those questions a few hundred times now and we're better for it.
Online is still a small part of what we do. We're building it slowly. The plan for 2024 is to get the website properly sorted and start taking the wholesale conversations seriously. More updates soon.