Big Honey Factory Tour With David Wainwright. Wainwrights Bee Farm

In this video I spend the day with David Wainwright from Wainwrights Bee Farm. Or also known as Tropical Forest. Their a honey farm based near Aberystwyth in Wales. But their bees are kept across the whole of the UK.
Wainwrights Bee Farm keeps around 1,800 full size beehives and 700 nucs. They are one of the biggest bee farms in the UK. Supplying honey right across the UK to small independent shops all the way up to supermarket giant Marks and Spencers. They also sell their premium honey into shops like Harrods of London.
This is the second video I've filmed with David. I would highly recommend you you watch our first video below where we visited a number of his apiaries and learned how he keeps 2,500 beehives.
• How To Manage Thousand...
In this video we get a Honey factory tour. Exploring every corner of this impressive facility. David and his team can extract 2,000kg of honey a day from this site using top of the range honey extracting equipment from New Zealand manufactured by Boutelje Products.
His equipment is designed for Manuka honey but does a great job of extracting heather honey and wildflower or blossom honey.
They also bottle 5,500 jars of honey every day using a lot of equipment David has modified from the dairy industry.
We talk a lot of business and find out a lot more about Wainwrights Bee Farms operations.
This is really an impressive setup. David has achieved so much within beekeeping and the future is looking very bright Wainwrights Bee Farm.
To find out more about me you can visit my website on;
gwenyngruffydd...
Or find me on Social Media on @GwenynGruffydd

[@aaronparis4714]

As a African Canadian I think your friend is amazing that he helped them out and it’s been a hard time for my people so this makes me very happy ❤❤

[@gwenyngruffydd]

💛💛

[@jscfb]

He's built up really impressive business very innovative repurposing old dairy equipment and paying wages instead of computers running everything really good content made my morning thanks 🤝🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

[@hevchip741]

I agree, impressive but kept it real too

[@gwenyngruffydd]

It’s a great setup, great people and a great business

[@SteveJones-rv2ze]

Always a pleasure to watch Griff interview, massive thanks to David for his valuable time and thank you Griff fir another inspirational video.

[@gwenyngruffydd]

Glad you enjoyed it 😊

[@deecull8750]

Excellent video Great watch

[@gwenyngruffydd]

Thank you ☺️

[@rodolfotorres6898]

I like the facility, crean and in order, employees properly wear. Hairnets are a must ❤

[@rickwarner516]

What a wonderful story thanks for sharing this and thank you wainwright family ❤❤❤❤❤🍯🍯🍯🍯

[@juskonig]

Amazingm thanks to David to providing such access and being a "good sport" and thank you for putting this together, very inspirational and well produced!

[@gwenyngruffydd]

Glad you enjoyed it

[@stevedonohoe]

Awesome; thanks to Gruff and David for sharing - really interesting & inspirational

[@gwenyngruffydd]

Thanks Steve, glad you enjoyed it 😊

[@barryduke8329]

Great video. Great ethos from David, I extract my colonies on the Isle of Wight 1 at a time. ( as David is on a much bigger scale I understand why he does 1 apiary at a time). This means his honey does not have the same generic honey taste, and colour, that the other large honey producers have. It is a great selling point too. Some people when they realise my honey is from different places on the Isle of Wight buy more than one jar as it can look and taste so different from different apiaries. So nice to see the labels not saying “from eu and non eu countries”.

[@gwenyngruffydd]

Wainwrights don’t pack that kind of honey. They are different to the massive honey packers because they’re beefarmers too and really understand honey.

[@WellesbourneHoneyCo]

TOYOTA HILUX - Just in case you need a 50 Cal turret point. lol. Remember the 2 Shoe salesmen that went to Africa, they land, 1st guy phones the office "Boss i'm comeing home, nobody wears shoes here, The second guy phones his boss "Bos Bos, send me every pair of shoes you have". Great Video as allways Griff. Thank you David for the insite. Much appreciated.

[@erichnagy1216]

This owner is a very smart Man. Learned a lot from yhe video.

[@Meloehunter]

Great video loved every minute.

[@HoneyMarketingBoard]

Great work David.

[@johnrennie-h4z]

That is impressive, and he,s a very modest gentleman.

[@jasonelliott9837]

Great video, thank you both. Enjoyed seeing the Boutlje equipment for extraction and filtering.

[@lorenzobal6491]

This was so great to see. Thank you for this video 🐝👍🏼

[@gwenyngruffydd]

😊👍🏻

[@tweake7175]

hi from nz. great to see the needlers and spin float in use over there. we run a similar system, but with the auto version of the needlers. having no decapper helps with the bees quite a bit, as a lot more wax is retained on the frame.

[@gwenyngruffydd]

Hi! Its a great system! First time for me to see one working. The only downside of it is if you want a beeswax crop its less. We sell a lot of beeswax so want as much as we can produce! But you cant have it all in life! ha! Thanks for watching and commenting, hope your having a great season!

[@tweake7175]

@@gwenyngruffydd cheers. Lots of clover coming in on the garden hives over xmas.

[@sportnastava]

big respect, you dont see this every day in details

[@Devonhoneyandcandles]

amazing

[@peterreinke6221]

Amazing.

[@aidan4158]

I love the smell of harvesting honey, I want to try doing cut comb honey next year using thin foundation that doesn't have wires.

[@MyPrince1981]

Great video 👌

[@gwenyngruffydd]

Thanks 👍

[@paulf4424]

That's some set up. Taking honey producing to a new level. That's something to aspire to griff

[@gwenyngruffydd]

Absolutely

[@DenbeeHoney]

Excellent thankyou Team Griff

[@gwenyngruffydd]

Thank you ☺️

[@davidmiles5626]

Great production. I do enjoy Mr. Wainwright's viewpoint and wisdom he imparts on the business. I always pick up a few bits of knowledge that I can use on my small farm here in Kansas. I would love to visit someday. Thanks for all the hard work.

[@gwenyngruffydd]

Thank you, glad you enjoyed the video 😊

[@Manuherikiabeekeeping]

Hi from southern New Zealand 👋😂 I laughed when I saw that manuka spiker and I was just thinking it looked like one when he said it was. It's becoming more popular to spike rather than uncapping, much clearer honey and less faf with wax, which is leading to a beeswax shortage in New Zealand 😂 and that's great for me though because beeswax is my primary product rather than honey. There's a few large producers of honey here in central Otago, im not interested in competing with them, they do a great job with the local thyme and vipers bugloss honey, i do a few specialty jars of unusual honey such as sycamore which one of my apairys collects, give a wee bit of thyme honey away, honeys expensive here so the friends and neighbors get a few free jars but mostly my honey gets fed back to my bees for cosmetic grade beeswax production. there's no shortage of beeswax demand, especially with the increase in use of these spikers. Great video 👍😃 really enjoyed it

[@gwenyngruffydd]

😊👍🏻

[@martincurran9008]

Great operation, I love seeing what others do , very impressive , does David use a queen excluder in his operation ?

[@gwenyngruffydd]

Yes he does

[@hevchip741]

Blue suits you.😊

[@gwenyngruffydd]

😊

[@jasonseaward8506]

So are the barrels just open on the bottom then for the decrystallization? On a different subject, i really like that uncapper machine.

[@gwenyngruffydd]

They turn the barrels upside down in the melter

[@RovexHD]

The Zambian honey tastes fantastic.

[@gwenyngruffydd]

sure does! Its very different to most honeys!

[@tweake7175]

in nz we call the needlers, prickers.

[@gwenyngruffydd]

Thank you. Will need to add that into the tags to help more NZ beekeepers see the video!

[@zakheintzelman9570]

Can come to hawaii and see a queen operation and a cowen 28 system.

[@gwenyngruffydd]

I’d love that!! But my budget won’t spread that far!

[@hevchip741]

Well, this has made my mind up, no point trying to get into the market and compete against this size outfit.

[@gwenyngruffydd]

That’s not the case. Even a setup this big can only service so many customers. The bigger you get the more costs you add on to your business. A smaller supplier can always compete on price but maybe not so much on scale. We are much smaller than Davids business and we have found a market too. Your strongest market will always be in and around your area.

[@hevchip741]

@gwenyngruffydd true. It was pretty impressive and so well organised. Good luck to him, beats all those awful, fake products from Asia.

[@brucklay227]

Great video BUT we didn’t see his honey creamer process.

[@gwenyngruffydd]

Thank you, no your right. I should have asked the question.

[@brucklay227]

@ not to worry maybe we can see your new set-up once you have laid it out.Doubtless you will do some creaming ? Looking forward to see all that apparatus at work.

[@hughreynolds6183]

How warm is warm for pre-heating supers for extraction?

[@gwenyngruffydd]

20 something degrees

[@hughreynolds6183]

How are the frames, for cut comb, made without nails?

[@gwenyngruffydd]

Their different frames. They’re pre wired.

[@davidmcdowell-Rowantree-Honey]

Impressive stuff! Don’t think he could ever call any of that honey raw, due to the heating processes

[@gwenyngruffydd]

All honey needs to be heated to a degree. It sets like steel in a barrel or bucket. You can’t jar it all up on day one. You need to re-liquify it to be able to jar it.

[@davidmcdowell-Rowantree-Honey]

@@gwenyngruffydd. I know what you mean, but down the line when it comes to raw, it might have to be straight from the hive, filtered lightly and jarred and sold asap, that’s all I’m saying, good for smaller beekeepers to have that in their arsenal 👍

[@michaellindsay1093]

Eney mead in the inn

[@gwenyngruffydd]

No, no mead. But David does supply honey to a few mead makers.

[@Imkerei2024]

Which paint is in barels

[@gwenyngruffydd]

Not sure, but their food grade barrels

[@Cubrider]

As a bee farmer will he have to pay the new 20% inheritance tax

[@gwenyngruffydd]

More than likely, i have not looked into the details of that to be honest.

[@44birdie44]

Would you wear goggles when liming and filling the bobman? Know of a couple of kf young lads who nearly lost their eyesight due to lime.

[@gwenyngruffydd]

Hi not sure what you’re asking what’s a bobman? And where is the lime?

[@m1nfy]

It's the name of a place :-) Probably sited near where an old lime kiln was, just like some pubs are called lime kiln now.

[@44birdie44]

@@gwenyngruffydd ah, this comment was for a different video. Dairy farmer in Ireland liming cubicles without eye protection.

[@gwenyngruffydd]

😂👍🏻

[@David-Frederick]

Why does it say zambian on most of youre jars i can see for sale on like amazon ? i thought its supposed to be uk honey made by uk Bees ?

[@gwenyngruffydd]

Wainwright also specialises in African honey too. That honey is not produced by them. Only the British.

[@Inderjeetmanuka]

I also have experience in beekeeping and I have a certificate from a government institution. I need a job. If you need a beekeeper then tell me sir.

[@sidelinerbeekeeper]

I hate podcasts where the host does all the talking. Gwenyn could have said less, he was cutting off David mid sentence, probably just a bad habit. A good interview is when the interviewee is allowed to ramble on the topics at free will. They have the chance to talk about what is most important to them in their mind. Then, the interviewer edits it to be interesting and on point. A third interview would be interesting.

[@gwenyngruffydd]

Thanks for the feedback. I have had no media training or any kind of interview experience/ training. I just turn up with a GoPro and a drone and shoot from the hip 😅. I will try to improve.

[@MyPrince1981]

Podcast? I like David but if it was left to him the video would’ve been 3 hours long 🤷‍♂️

[@dougblease5170]

I think it’s a mix of the guys being excited and inspired, and David being a man of few words.

[@chrishumphreys9363]

Another great video Griff. Wainwrights have it down to a T. Pure UK Honey. Lets hope the fake honey stops coming in. This " A blend of None EU Honeys is pure Sh%t.

[@gwenyngruffydd]

100%

[@normankampfer7428]

But they shoud wear a mouth shelter!!!!

[@gwenyngruffydd]

If you have a beard then yes you wear a beard snood. Otherwise there is no need