CreagMhòr Hebrideans Glen Urquhart Loch Ness

30/05/2022

WOW!! Great work & what a team. Can't believe you managed it without any prior beekeeping experience - that is truly special. Most folk would run away!! Time to give them a nice new home and return them to Corrimony.

PS - They look about as native as you'll get so they will be DNA tested asap.😍🙏😀👍

15/03/2022

Are you a farmer within the Loch Ness area and interested in how your farming practice can positively influence nature and biodiversity? If so please come along to the below event. Details attached. This event is free and run by Affric Highland, WellNess & Treesforlife.

See you there!

13/03/2022

First peek! We trialled one of our apiaries with a different method this winter. The 'hands off' approach.......after putting two supers on per hive last summer instead of the normal three the brood nests were absolutely chocked with honey going into winter. Once the supers came off we walked away not feeding syrup or fondant and unusually for us we also decided (in a leap of faith) to not treat for varroa as our hives are fairly isolated. Today was the first peek - honey barriers still intact on the top of some of the combs and the bees are still covering 7 frames with pollen coming in as of this week (north highlands Hazel and now Gorse in places). It's going to be tough to keep my hands in my pockets the next few weeks but at least the clear crown board will allow us to keep checking progress and intervene if we need to. When I suggested this was possible some years ago and even more so with poly hives I was told the bees would eat themselves to starvation as they wouldn't cluster in the warmth of a poly hive. Theory debunked???🤞🤞

We also repeated the same experiment with two 6 frame poly nucs and the results were the same. No feeding of any kind was given and both nucs are going strong surviving on their own pure highland honey.

08/01/2022

3 degrees celcius and facing NNW but the Colonsay bees are flying. Hardly a record for us but crikey it's good to see them flying alive and well. Onwards to spring.😍

07/11/2021

A brilliant article raising public awareness of what native honeybee beekeepers have known to be true all along - native honeybees still exist in the UK and need urgent protection. There is some correction required in the article but on the whole it's very much on point.👏👏

The ‘ecotype’, thought to have been wiped out by disease and invasive species, is thriving in the estate’s ancient woodlands

30/10/2021

Yummy breakfast for the puppers!! A hearty meal to support the weaning process: Chicken, Beef, Tripe, Raw Eggs, Kidney, Liver, Carrots, Butternut Squash, Brocoli, Curly Kale, Salmon Oil, Coconut Oil, Sea Kelp & Billberry! 👍💪👊🤙👀

Mine - Muesli......😭

The life of a gundog!🐕🐕🐕🐕

26/10/2021

This is a terrific new development in Ireland which fingers crossed will have a positive knock on effect on our own Scottish Government legislation. Not before time!!

https://www.facebook.com/523689337655182/posts/4911927248831347/?sfnsn=scwspmo

**Breaking News**

Last week Green Party Senator Vincent P Martin introduced a bill to the Seanad, “Protection of the Native Irish Honey Bee Bill 2021,” to ban the importation of non-native honey bees into Ireland. The aim is to reduce the threat to and adverse impact upon biodiversity and the ecosystem arising from native Irish honey bees, Apis mellifera mellifera, inadvertently getting hybridised with imported non-native subspecies. In 2020, imports of non-native queens increased by 327% from 2019. Hybridisation is causing the loss of native traits and often results in aggressive, unpredictable bees.

During the last several years NIHBS, in conjunction with other partners, has been lobbying for such an act. This is an exciting first stage in what might still be a very long process.

To prevent the extinction of this precious natural heritage species, we hope other legislators will see the value in protecting and conserving our native honey bee, which has adapted to Ireland’s climate over many millennia.

For more info, visit www.NIHBS.org.

24/10/2021

Not often you see us all together but here we are enjoying a fine day in fine company at Loch Ness Pumpkins just down the glen...and sitting down too! A rare day indeed.🤔😂😍

'Hats off' to the Girvan clan at Corrimony Farm for creating and hosting such a brilliant annual event with smiles always on full beam.😁😁

Not forgetting for the wonderful local food & drinks and Drew Maclennan Photography for making us all look half decent.

Can't wait for next year!!😍

23/10/2021

Post by Ali.
These little angels will be 5 weeks on Monday!!! Would it be so bad to keep them all?!? haha! 🤔🙈❤

17/10/2021

Our two year experiment is over. In conjunction to running our flock of Hebrideans for the last wee while we've also kept some commercials mainly to see the comparisons between primitive breeds and improved breeds. In short we'll continue to invest in Hebrideans as they align so much easier with our aims and those of the crofters and landowners we work with. The below selection of ewes will therefore be presented for sale at the Dingwall Mart on Saturday 13th and they will be the last commercials we ever own. They are all crackers and represent: 3crop Beltex x, 3 - 1crop Black Cheviots, 1crop Zwarbtles x, 1crop beltex shetland x, 2crop cheviot wiltshirehorn x. True to form they were all treated with the same non luxurious lifestyle of outdoor living 24/7 365 a year with grass and hay for their munchies just as nature provided and in the same way our hebs are treated. Have they done well on it - absolutely and that was the main purpose of keeping them however our enthusiasm for rare & minority breeds is still the priority where bombproof sheep like the hebs do exceptionally well on virtually nothing browsing their way to fitness as opposed to the grazing types. This lends itself to reshaping modern agriculture and rebalancing some of the sustainability issues we know exist. The sheep which will be sold below won't be sold over FB and are the ideal run for newstarts or smallholders - a mini flock if you will. Therefore please don't ask the silly questions "how much" and blah blah blah. The reason being we haven't had a mart day due to covid for 3 years so we're needing a rare day out with a good bit of craic to boot and a cup of tea in warm company. 🤙🤘🖖🤞✌🤟👌👍

16/10/2021

***No word of a lie it all happened***😂😂😂

It was just an ordinary day collecting & moving tups from hither and tither until me, the kids and a trailer bound tup took a wrong turn into Blairbeg park and I somehow ended up officiating shinty at the Camanachd Association Sutherland Cup Final 2021. How it befell to me that there were no other able bodied candidates amongst the throng I'll never know but somehow the pointy finger of fate fell adrift and landed on me instead. So there I am in my muddy steel boots reeking of sheep hoofing it up and down the line in my newly donned high vis vest flag in hand chasing the fastest teams in the sport all the while failing miserably in keeping the Newtonmore & Lovat fans on my side. I'm convinced I played my part in bad decision making pretty much every time the ball went out of play but thankfully the pints were flowing at such a rate I don't think anyone really noticed. I'll have to check the Camanached Association You Tube channel when the dust settles for my clangers but despite them Newtonmore won deservingly 5:1 and at least the eyes of the referee were working better than mine. As they drove the game home the final whistle blew and at the last hit out from the Newtonmore defense the ball landed squarely into the paws of none other. Cup winning ball as souvenir in hand and thinking I would sneak away to relieve my idling tup, I was doubly alarmed to hear my name over the tannoy. Despite the ensuing angst this caused it was only to remind me to collect my 2nd souvenir of the day. A medal no less!! Casting aside the momentary unworthiness of receiving this prized possesion, a pride I've never been able to experience at the end of a game as a player soon came over me and following the covid handshakes none other than local man Gary MacKintosh presented me with my linesman medal. The best part of the day however was seeing my old coach Alan Bell, legend of the sport that he is, welling up at the end with all his pearly whites on show. What he said I will never forget. "You finally got your shinty medal" as both his fists shook the air. (True enough Alan unless we count the under 12s medal I have on the shelf). My pride not being quite complete I'd like to make it further known that not just any medal came home with me today, but I also take home the acolade of it being one of only two medals awarded to Glen Urquhart players this year. The other one went to my eldest son, today's other linesman, whose fault it was in the first place that I took the initial wrong turn and ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time - I guess I have to thank him for that now.

Whether anybody ever figured out that there was a disgruntled tup in my trailer for the duration of the final is for another day but all I'll say here is that when he did eventually sense his impending freedom, he darted out of that trailer like a hare out of a trap and he's not for catching for a very long time....

15/10/2021

***FOOD GLORIOUS FOOD***

Croft produce available to order now for *January*: we are once again offering our sustainable and outdoor reared hebridean hogget for sale. As you know our small flock is kept outdoors 24/7 365 days a year grazing on nothing other than grass or hay and on low stocking densities so if you are looking for low cholesterol top quality prime meat not available in the supermarket please message us. In order to keep costs low for you the customer we only offer two varieties: half boxes or full boxes (9kg or 18kg on average) at the usual price of £6.66 per kilo. These are professionally butchered and delivered fresh to your door or can be frozen on request. As a result we do not offer specific singular 'cuts' rather you get a half or whole hebridean which you can learn to cook for a vast array of meals and experience real food!! (We can request 'how' you would like your box cut by the butcher of course.)

Please also be aware that we don't sell lamb, only hogget and on occassion mutton. Hebrideans take 18 months to mature given that they are an ancient breed, primitive and not intensively reared for meat production. This allows the breed and meat to develop at it's own natural pace and produces a high welfare, low cost, low food mile product well known for excellence but don't take our word for it, listen to Alex or look at the reviews.😂😂

"The meat from Hebridean sheep is unique. It has a rich, dark colour, succulent tender texture and a gamey, utterly delicious flavour. Tasted against locally produced butchers' lamb and some very good Welsh lamb, there was no contest: the Hebridean won hands down. It was tender with a really good bite, rich but didn't leave that greasy, fatty taste in the mouth and it was so full of flavour that some of the young tasters couldn't believe it really was lamb."

Alex Barker : Guild of Food Writers.