Can you tell us how you first got into beekeeping and how Arran Bee Products began?

yeah it was all to do with a project at the primary school actually so in primary six or seven we had a series of talks from a local beekeeper they picked a best few got on their summer trip so you were taken up to see their hives at the heather and that was and we stayed at that time in south Lanarkshire where the hives were down somewhere between there and Moffat.

So I always wanted to keep bees after that, you know.

And yeah, so I started in the Forestry Commission down in Galloway about 40 years ago.

And there was a forester there who kept bees.

So I got the opportunity, you know.

You know, I've kept bees all that time.

And just finally, Andy, when someone buys some honey from yourself, what part of the island's landscape are they tasting?

What is the next process? What's involved in taking that honey to, to what we see in the jar here?

here?As a beekeeper, we give them, um, frames of thin wax, which is embossed with the hexagonal cell.

So they build wax on top of that to make cells.

So we-- I give them a box with 10 or 12, you know, of these frames in it.

The first process is that you need to get the bees off of those.

A couple of days, um, before you want to take the honey off, you have to put in a clearer board, which is a board with a one-way valve on it, I suppose, to clear them.

You take them home, and I've got an extractor.

[both laughing] Um, and, and just finally, Andy, when, you know, someone buys, buys some honey from yourself, what part of the island's landscape are they tasting?