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Self-confessed nature lover Peter Hunt of North Bovey started keeping bees some 50 years ago. He’d always wanted to get involved with these fascinating little creatures and as a local hotelier, the idea that his own honey could be used for culinary purposes in his business was an added bonus.
Rearing sheep which could also feature on the menu was a natural progression - and his Jacob sheep have become a passion in the same way as his hives - which now number more than 100!
Peter said: ’My biggest inspiration in life was the naturalist Peter Scott. I’ve always been interested in animals and nature - unfortunately I wasn’t clever enough to study them university and I ended up at catering college instead, but I’ve been lucky enough to incorporate working with people and food and animals.’
Aside from the fact that Jacob sheep, according to Peter, have a fantastic, almost gamey flavour, the quality of their wool is also extremely good. He has his breeding ewes tested genetically to make sure the micron content of their fleece - or the amount of ‘crimp’ - is going to be consistently high. The beautifully soft wool is cleaned and separated into the natural brown and white colours of a Jacob sheep - it’s spun at Blacker Yarns in Launceston and a friend from Tavistock dies the white wool using natural colourings.
Watching him feed his ‘girls’, you can see how fond Peter is of his animals - he admits he has to be stern with himself to avoid getting over-attached to them, which, as he says, would lead to him running a nursing home for old aged sheep!
If caring for 30 ewes, a couple of rams, 25 chickens and a Jack Russell called April wasn’t enough, Peter, aged 72, has the odd matter of maybe four million honeybees to tend - based on an average of 40,000 insects per hive.
Clustered in groups of around ten, they are dotted around Dartmoor, the Tamar Valley and even Cornwall. During the winter they look after themselves, but as soon as the merest hint of spring arrives, Peter will be out and about checking each hive - a time-consuming and quite physical job.
‘Actually, I do think my honey is quite special,’ he said modestly. ‘It’s a bit like birdwatching, which I also love. I was taught the first thing you need to know with birdwatching is to learn your own patch. Bee keeping is a little bit similar, you have to see what grows in particular areas over 12 months. We have quite a lot of brambles in the hedges here, which complements clover really well. You get the dandelions in the spring which give quite a strong flavour, then you have the celandine and some of the tree blossoms, things like sycamore - if you marry all these flavours together, you get a very special honey.’
According to Peter, last year was ‘amazing’ for honey production, probably the best in the last ten years - despite a difficult start.
‘Dealing with livestock and nature is actually quite humbling. We had a really long, wet winter, the fatality rate was quite high as bees don’t like prolonged wet; most keepers lost a lot, but six weeks into spring the colonies expanded hugely because the weather and the nectar was so good. It was amazing they could increase so quickly.
‘Bees are controlled by daylight hours. As soon as it gets slightly lighter, they start feeding the queen and she starts to lay eggs. I always think as soon as I see the first snowdrop, it won’t be long until they are out and about.’
Peter, who also acts as a consultant to other apiarists in the area, said beekeeping was fascinating and endlessly absorbing.
‘You are always learning something new and each hive is like an individual. It’s a bit like walking through a housing estate - the houses might look the same but they are all different inside.’
He was also keen to stress the importance of educating beekeepers in order to make sure colonies remained healthy. The threat of the varroa mite, which wiped out many colonies in recent years, appears to be under control thanks to greater knowledge and improved husbandry, but the Asian hornet, which preys on honey bees, has been seen in the UK - just recently in Fowey - and identifying and reporting sightings is of vital importance to ensure the insect doesn’t get a foothold here as it has elsewhere in Europe.
‘They hang around the opening of the hive and literally pick them off as they leave,’ said Peter with a grimace.
‘We have to look after nature, from a conservation point of view it’s vital. Trees are a classic example - you don’t plant a tree for yourself, you plant it for your grandchildren.’
Jane Honey