The Park at Mawgan Porth is not only a BBK Honey Bee friendly park – we also have our own bees, our own beekeeper and our own 100% raw honey available for guests to buy…
Beekeeper Luke Hambly has worked at The Park since 2013, having qualified as a horticulturalist and now benefitting from ongoing training and mentorship from a family member with 40+ years’ experience in the field. Luke presides over 10 hives at The Park, which can house anything from 5,000-60,000 bees each, depending on the season.
Luke harvests our delicious raw honey by hand. Each jar is unfiltered and treatment-free, with different batches bearing different colours and flavours that are influenced by the gorgeous seasonal flowers around The Park.
Luke has left enough of the bees own honey stores to feed throughout the winter instead of sugar syrup. As the bee season is now coming to the end, he’s started closing the bees down for winter. This consists of leaving the brood box and a super box full of honey for the bees.
He won't be opening the hive as much as in warm weather, as the cold will kill the eggs and larvae if exposed for too long, but he’ll still be checking the inspection board for varroa and wax moth until winter is actually here. He has also put on mouse guards as the small rodents love to go in the hive to keep warm and eat the wax and honey throughout the winter period.
Luke is one of our green-fingered, eco-friendly staff whose work has been praised by botanist David Bellamy and indeed earnt a gold-level David Bellamy Conservation Award – a major environmental accolade. Many of The Park’s staff are locals who are especially keen to ensure that The Park fits in with and doesn’t harm its stunning natural environment.
Described by Bellamy as ‘true friends of the countryside’, Luke and the team were also commended for their efforts to protect honey bees, create new wildflower habitats, and plant wildlife-friendly hedges. The Park now has thousands of high nectar-bearing flowers providing vital foraging for honey bees, butterflies and other pollinators.
In addition to our eight bee hives, our 27-acre grounds are home to many bird, owl and bat boxes, a hedgehog hotel and insect refuges. Other environmental initiatives at our holiday park are a ban on single-use plastics in the restaurant and a focus on regional ingredients to minimise air miles, the recycling of left-behind bodyboards, buckets and spades, shielded illumination to reduce light pollution, and events such as beach school and beach clean-ups to get children and other guests actively involved in ecologically minded projects.
As well as buying our honey, guests can enjoy freshly laid eggs from our hens in exchange for a donation to Surfers Against Sewage, a marine conservation charity created in 1990 by a group of Cornish surfers.
Find out more about what’s around the grounds at The Park Cornwall
