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Live & Grow 🌿 Live & Grow | Foraging, nature-led living & local honey 🍯

Sharing practical skills from nature and offering small-batch, locally produced honey. UK-based.

18/10/2026

Months of hive checks, a dry summer and more stings than I can remember! 🐝

Finally finding some time to jar this year's honey crop! 🍯

What would you put it on first?

Golden haul from the Finnish forest. 🍄Foraged these chanterelles yesterday in Finland. It’s great to be back and bringin...
30/07/2026

Golden haul from the Finnish forest. 🍄

Foraged these chanterelles yesterday in Finland. It’s great to be back and bringing home dinner from the woods.

Cleaned, chopped, fried and liked by some more than others! 😂 (One critic remains unconvinced.)

Forest, fire, sausages and berries - must be Finland! 🇫🇮🔥
26/07/2026

Forest, fire, sausages and berries - must be Finland! 🇫🇮🔥

20/07/2026

Felt the need to share this short video my eldest daughter made of our extraction weekend.

Watching it back reminds me why we go through all the effort. The bees gave us 20kg less than last year, two buckets where we'd hoped for more.

But that's the lesson I want my kids to learn. Sometimes you work hard for very little reward.

You turn up anyway. We'll be back next year. 🐝🍯

17/07/2026

New kit at the apiary. This is a 9-frame radial electric extractor and it does the heavy lifting on extraction day.

How it works: uncapped frames go in vertically around the drum, the motor spins them and centrifugal force pulls honey out of both sides of the comb at once. No flipping frames like a tangential model. Honey hits the walls, runs down and collects at the bottom, then drains out the honey gate into a sieve and bucket.

Washed, assembled and test spun. Ready for extraction day (tomorrow)!

When I can’t find the queen in a hive, I look for eggs instead. Eggs hatch in about three days, so if I see them, I know...
09/07/2026

When I can’t find the queen in a hive, I look for eggs instead.

Eggs hatch in about three days, so if I see them, I know she was here recently — no need to hunt for her among 50,000 bees.

One egg per cell. That’s enough for me to close the hive up and let them get on with it.

04/07/2026

Not even 1 minute old and already saying hi!

Greetings from the Arctic Circle
02/07/2026

Greetings from the Arctic Circle

Final hive checks before I head off to the Finnish wilderness for a week. Three out of five colonies came up fighting in...
26/06/2026

Final hive checks before I head off to the Finnish wilderness for a week.

Three out of five colonies came up fighting in the heat with me being rewarded with yet another sting in the face!

Three supers added to keep them happy while I’m away!

08/05/2026

Finally got to inspect the hives today.

Found eggs ✅
Found capped queen cells ✅
No queen ❌

Looked up and the swarm revealed itself! 🐝🌳

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RH10
Crawley
RH10

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Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm
Saturday 9am - 5pm
Sunday 9am - 5pm

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