Welcome to the website of Clootwijck Apiaries. Clootwijck Apiaries is situated on Clootwijck Estate, together with the biological (SKAL - certified) tree nursery Clootwijck Nurseries B.V.. The nursery brings a large diversity of trees, flowers and plants to the estate. Each plant and flower has its specific way of blooming, which results im varied and original honey flavours.

Busy Bees
Making honey is a labour intensive job: to make 1 kilo of honey, bees have to gather more than 4 kilo of nectar. For this purpose they fly approximately 100.000 times back and forth from flower to beehive. This means that the bees have to visit millions of flowers to make one 450 gram jar of honey. Bees thus truly are 'Busy'Bees.

Bees visit during their flight only one type of flowers. They continue to do so until there is nothing more to collect. Only then, they fly to another type of flower.
Wanneer nectar van 1 bloemsoort wordt gewonnen krijgt de honing de naam van de desbetreffende bloem. Zo ontstaat heidehoning, lindehoning, klaverhoning of koolzaadhoning. Komt de nectar van meerdere bloemsoorten dan heet hij bloemenhoning of zomerhoning.

Beehives
Clootwijck Apiaries and her partners abroad use several types of beehives. These include the traditional basked of straw, the Standard or Simplex hive, the Dadant type, and the socalled "top bar"hive.

Taking care of bees
Bees store honey as their food for the winter, enabling them to survive the winter from their own food stock. The beekeeper will be able to harvest less honey because of this. Beekeepers that operate in an organic manner feed the bees extra in the winter, beekeepers that do not operate in an organic manner feed their bees sugar water in the winter.

Sales of honey
Clootwijck Apiaries sells several types of honey: own honey, specialty honey from other parts of The Netherlands and from foreign partners. For more information, see 'products'.