A Day Out at Quince Honey Farm

While on vacation at Woolacombe Bay again this year, we decided to check out some local areas and ended up going to Quince Honey Farm! We’ve never been to a honey farm before, and felt this would be a really unique, fun day out that felt very new for us all! Quince Honey Farm is a local honey farm that has loads of flowers planed specifically for bees, bee hives, bee keepers, honey tasting, a honey factory, candle making, soft play and a lovely cafe. There is actually a lot to do here, with different events every few hours for you to participate in.

We got there just after noon, missing the seed bar event as we didn’t know these were very strict times. The seed bar event allows you to create a little pot of bee-friendly seeds and learn about bee friendly plants and why they are important. Instead, we sat down for lunch as there was a bit of a wait until the next timed event. The Quince Honey Farm cafe has a set menu as well as like five different specials that are listed on their board. I ended up with the Ploughman’s platter, Dann and Robin got the soup of the day, Kai got a burger and Amelia got a salmon cake. All of the food was very fancy and very delicious – though we tucked right in and I didn’t get nearly as many pictures as I should have! The soup of the day was very freshly made, and nothing took too long to come out either. We all got milkshakes too.

After we had finished our lunch, we went out to explore the gardens. These gardens are really beautiful – the site is set up in a bunch of honeycomb shapes, with each section having signs and different plants full of bees. There are bees everywhere! Some plants are inside a greenhouse, while most others are outside. There are also decorative bits like an old fashion bee house on a well, a telephone booth that has been transformed into a bee house, and so much more. Outside, there is also a play park with a giant bee house that you can play in, as well as an outdoor toddler area that has trucks to drive and sand to dig in. There is a scavenger hunt that you can pick up, for free, in the gift shop if you’d like but we were more into taking fun pictures of the bees.

After doing a lot of exploring, checking out the park, and taking loads of pictures of beautiful flowers and bees, we went to the honey tasting and honey factory tour. The honey factory is really intense – the moment you walk in you can smell the sweet, sugary honey. Inside you can see a lot of the machinery behind glass, along with a lot of bees who have made their way in. One of the staff members told us al about how they harvest honey, extract honey, and how they ensure that the bees are not harmed in this process. Once we had learned a bunch about gathering honey, they sat us down for honey tasting where we learned about why honey would taste different year on year, how flowers nearby changes the texture and taste of honey, and about how supermarket honey is actually a mix of honey all over along with a bunch of added sugar so it does taste the same. Then, we all got four honey samples – which were all very different!

After tasting our honey, washing our hands, we then went to the candle making class where we made beeswax candles, as well as learned about this type of beeswax, why bees make it, and how it’s different from honeycomb, as well as why it burns for so long! Then, we got to rolling our own candles which was a pretty easy process. Once we were done, the girls played with some of the puzzles at the back, before we went out to explore some more. Everyone decided they wanted to go to the soft play next. This soft play was massive, with lots of really fun slides. We were a bit nervous that Kai and Amelia would be too big to play, but this soft play supported up to 16 years old and Amelia really loved the slides in the end! While everyone was playing in the soft play, I went to the Bee Keeper demo, which had a beekeeper behind some glass, a camera pointed at what they were doing, and I learned a lot about beekeeping and gathering honey for the factory. This building also had a small amount of reptiles on display, as well as a little cave hunt for younger ones.

We also spent some time at the gallery building, where there is a video of how the Quince Honey Farm was built as well as a bunch of close up pictures of bees and other bugs on flowers. There were a bunch of different beekeeper suits over the years, and a little area where you could put your arms through gloves and bees would land on you! It was a very interestingly designed building.

The Quince Honey Farm has tons of things to do, and there are so many moments of education there. I was pleasantly surprised at how much we were able to fit into our day, and how much fun it was to learn about bees and see all of the different aspects of gaining honey. Everyone had a good time, which is always the goal on holiday!

You can check out our other Days Out to see what else we’ve been up too!