The best local honey in the New Forest - it's now official!
I'm pleased to announce that this year's honey crop is now officially the best in the New Forest! Ringwood Honey and New Forest Heather Honey recently won 1st prize in the New Forest & District Beekeepers' Association annual honey show.
After 5 years of keeping bees, I finally plucked up enough courage so see how my honey compares to that of the other local beekeepers by entering the New Forest Beekeepers' honey show. With over 200 members and some with 50+ years experience in beekeeping it was pretty daunting experience to say the least, but I was thrilled to find out that the honey won all three classes!
Showing honey is a complicated matter and for a first time entrant there was a lot to learn and get right.
I entered 3 classes - Novice, Light Honey and Heather Honey and I'm delighted to say the honey won all three classes.! Amazing results for my first competition - and realistically it's all down to the very clever bees.
Ringwood Honey won 1st prize in the Light Honey class at the New Forest Beekeepers' 2019 Honey Show
New Forest Heather Honey won 1st prize in the Heather Honey class at the New Forest Beekeepers' 2019 Honey Show. It also came first in the Novice category.
Amazing tasting honey that's been carefully produced is more or less a given at these honey shows, and after a lot of research, it seemed to come down to the following points to help separate all the fantastic local honey that had been entered.
There's plenty of things to get right when entering honey shows including;
- Making sure they are the right weight, and the right type for the class with correct and matching jars and lids
- No unwelcome materials in the honey or poor cleanliness (specks / rusty lids / specks in bottom of jars, dirt or crystals on inside of lid or bubbles on the surface of the honey or crystals in clear honey
- Making sure the honey is the right viscosity
- No smears on glass, tipped honey on otherwise a clean lid
- It doesn't have a poor aroma, or the lack of an aroma
- That the flavour isn't boring, poor flavour, or the lacking in anyway
- Ling heather honey is a true thixotropic gel and isn't diluted with other honeys