Our Manuka
Our Manuka
We planted our first manuka tree in 2019 and haven’t stopped since.
We now have over 1300 manuka trees in our manuka meadows covering 9 acres of the farm. We grow our manuka trees from seed and since 2024 have been collecting those seeds from our own trees to produce the first generation of Dorset manukas.
The roots of these amazing little trees are helping pump carbon deep into our soils whilst their abundant blossom feeds a wide range of local insects.
We are attempting to produce Dorset’s first manuka honey and, once the trees are ready, we plan to start harvesting the leaves to create delicious manuka tea.
Our Bees
An incredibly experienced and respected Dorset beekeeper manages our bees to ensure that they are as healthy and happy as possible. The hives are brought to the farm in the spring, positioned within our manuka meadows and the bees forage our land and the surrounding Bride Valley throughout the summer.
Our challenge is to convince our bees to forage our manuka trees rather than the native wildflowers and blossoms they know and love, something we have not yet managed to do.
The bees then return home with our beekeeper in the autumn so the honey can be expertly extracted using the best equipment and we can check for signs of manuka.
Our Honey
Our bees insist on producing a delicious traditional Dorset summer honey from our wildflowers and hedgerow blossom.
Manuka honey has distinct colour, flavour, thixotropic and chemical characteristics that differentiate it from traditional English honeys. We are looking for these unique markers but have so far seen absolutely no evidence of any manuka in our honey.
We will keep trying and as we plant more manuka trees and they continue to establish and mature we might start to see those magical first cells of manuka in our honey. Until then our bees will continue to make traditional Dorset honey from native flowers on our land.