Honey subscription · 37 colonies
A jar of honey from our hives, posted to your door every month. And, with it, news from the colonies that made it.
Dear friends of La Borie
A honey subscription means following a hive’s year, in step with the flowers.
On the hills of Saint-Austremoine, 37 colonies forage among the flowers of a farm worked without pesticides or chemical fertilisers for more than twenty years. Dylan looks after them, with real passion.
Every month, your honey travels from the farm to your door. You’ll also hear what’s going on in the hives: the queen laying again, the swarm leaving, the harvest, wintering. What works, and what doesn’t.
Tanguy, your farmer and cook
01 — A beehive’s year
Pick a month: what the bees are doing, what Dylan is doing, what’s in flower around the hives.
January · Winter right now
≈ 15,000 bees
February · Winter right now
≈ 12,000 bees
March · Spring right now
≈ 16,000 bees
April · Spring right now
≈ 25,000 bees
May · Spring right now
≈ 40,000 bees
June · Summer right now
≈ 50,000 bees
July · Summer right now
≈ 50,000 bees
August · Summer right now
≈ 40,000 bees
September · Autumn right now
≈ 30,000 bees
October · Autumn right now
≈ 20,000 bees
November · Autumn right now
≈ 17,000 bees
December · Winter right now
≈ 15,000 bees
02 — Anatomy of a frame
A Dadant hive holds ten wax frames side by side. Tap a part of the frame to see what goes on there.
Right at the top, the larder. When the honey is dry enough, the bees seal each cell with a wax lid: the capping. That’s the honey we harvest, from the supers.
A ring of colour between the honey and the larvae: yellow, orange, sometimes purple depending on the flowers. Packed down and fermented, it becomes “bee bread”, the protein that feeds the larvae.
In the middle, the eggs and larvae, fed several times an hour by the nurse bees. An egg looks like a tiny grain of rice standing up at the bottom of the cell.
The larvae have grown: the bees seal them under a domed, biscuit-coloured capping while they change. A worker is born 21 days after the egg is laid.
Bigger, more domed, often along the edges. The drones, the males, are born in 24 days. They don’t forage: their only job is to mate with a young queen.
Hanging from the bottom of the frame, like a peanut. A larva fed only on royal jelly becomes a queen there in 16 days. When Dylan spots one, he knows a swarm is on the way.
Only one per colony, longer than the workers. She lays all her life, for several years, and her scent holds the colony together. We mark ours with a dot of colour so we can find her.
On the frame
Right at the top, the larder. When the honey is dry enough, the bees seal each cell with a wax lid: the capping. That’s the honey we harvest, from the supers.
03 — From nectar to jar
Honey is nectar that the bees have patiently dried. Follow the drop, and watch the water go.
She sips nectar from the flowers and carries it home in her crop, a pouch just before the stomach. One trip, dozens of flowers.
Back at the hive, the house bees pass the nectar from one to another and add their enzymes: the sugars are transformed.
Placed in the cells, the nectar dries under the beating wings of the fanning bees, day and night, until it is less than 18% water.
The honey is ready: the bees seal the cell with a thin layer of wax. Then it keeps for years.
Dylan only takes the well-capped frames from the supers. The body of the hive stays with the bees: it’s their winter.
Uncapping, extracting, filtering, resting in the settling tank, then filling our 400 g and 120 g jars.
They say a worker bee makes barely a twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in her whole life. Think of that next time you spread some on your toast.
04 — 37 colonies and Dylan
Our hives sit on the farm’s hills, between the meadows, the woods and the market-garden terrace, where at the end of summer the heather turns the stony ground a pinkish purple.
Dylan looks after them all year round, with real passion: inspections, harvest, wintering, care. Next year, with Axel’s help, we’ll bring in new queens to give our colonies’ genetics fresh vigour.
The honey ends up on the table at rue de Pondichéry, at the Sunday market, and in our honey sweets.
The bees on the farm page
A last visit to each hive (stores, queen, health), entrance reducers against the cold and field mice, roofs checked, hives tilted forward so the rain runs off, and a treatment against varroa. The heather is one of the last flowering meals of the season.
05 — The plans
Your honey is posted every month to the address of your choice, anywhere in mainland France (Corsica included).
1 jar of honey, 400 g
For your morning toast and your evening herbal tea.
Price coming soon
our favourite
1 jar of 400 g + 1 treat from the hive
The honey, plus a surprise each month: honey sweets, honey caramel, a little 120 g jar.
Price coming soon
2 jars of 400 g + 1 treat from the hive
For those who put it on everything, and quite right too.
Price coming soon
A subscription paid in one go, for the length you choose. We post it every month to the person receiving it, in mainland France.
Online payment is coming very soon. In the meantime, leave us your address: we’ll get back to you about payment and the first delivery. Any questions? 07 75 75 70 70
Your subscription
In mainland France, Corsica included.
Request sent
Thank you! We’ll get back to you about payment and the first delivery.
Your request
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06 — Questions
Wildflower honey from our 37 colonies at La Borie (Saint-Austremoine, Haute-Loire), on a farm worked without pesticides or chemical fertilisers for more than twenty years. It changes a little with the seasons and the flowers: that’s all part of its charm.
Your honey is posted every month to the address of your choice, anywhere in mainland France (Corsica included).
To mainland France, Corsica included. We don’t ship to the French overseas territories or abroad yet.
The bees decide. In a difficult year we’ll tell you so plainly in the news from the colonies, and we’ll adjust what goes in your parcel rather than take from the bees the honey they need for the winter.
Yes: 3, 6 or 12 months, paid in one go. The person who receives it finds it in their letterbox every month, just like a subscriber.
Give a subscriptionEmail us at contact.laborie@gmail.com or call 07 75 75 70 70. Once online payment is open, each subscriber will also have their own space to manage their subscription.