Field trip to Malfroys Gold Hawkesbury hives

Field trip to Malfroys Gold Hawkesbury hives

A week ago we trotted off to a property on the Hawkesbury River near Ebenezer where Malfroys Gold have a small collection of hives nestled on a sandstone ridge above the river. If you've tried Malfroys Gold wild honey - particularly the recent Post Brood variety - then you'll understand what we mean when we say that seeing the hives in the landscape and listening to Tim explain his bee keeping philosophy made perfect sense. Malfroys Gold honey is quite simply a pure and intense expression of place and practice.

We've been singing the praises of Tim and Emma Malfroy's wild honey since we started selling it at the end of 2011 and it's been fascinating to watch the evolution of their practice and the change in the honey over the years. Tim was raised around bees and learned his craft from his father, a counter-culture progressive and master beekeeper who played Neil Young among the hives as he tended his bees. Maybe it was the enticing cocktail of music, nature and wild creatures that led Tim first to study music and then to return to the bush with Emma to work with bees.

But it was the search for a solution to the insistent problem of hive mites that triggered a cascade of questions about the logic and ethics of conventional beekeeping and started Tim and Emma off on the search for a more benign and respectful way to work with bees. It was clear to them that the more bee keepers intervened with the instinctive work of the bees, insinuating their demand for increased production over the health and wellbeing of the bees, the greater the problems and the more complex the solutions required to keep the whole thing working.

After years of research and testing, the Malfroys arrived at a system called Natural Beekeeping, an alternative approach that 'aims to provide for the needs of the bee colony above that of the beekeeper... a holistic approach based on respect and love for the bee colony.'

As the conventional bee keeping industry races to catch up to the intensive efficiencies and scale of the rest of the agricultural landscape, Malfroys Gold are heading in the opposite direction, focusing in on a more balanced, nuanced, localised relationship that builds resilience and capacity and produces a really extraordinary honey that is a unique expression of the time and place.

There are only a handful of Natural Beekeepers producing commercial volumes of honey in the world. We're lucky to have one here on our doorstep. 

Order your Malfroys Gold honey now.