You know how every jar of honey on a supermarket shelf looks the same? And how every time you buy that particular brand it tastes the same? Well I think this is doing the bees and beekeepers that made it a huge disservice because ‘real’ honey is different from hive to hive, and from day to day.
I don’t want to bring you honey that’s been blended in huge vats to make it taste consistently the same. I want you to experience what it’s like eating honey straight from the hive, as if you were the beekeeper and tasting your own bees’ honey.
Founder Emily and her beehive
So we jar each honey with the name of the beekeeper and the hive it’s from, as well as the honey’s main natural flavour note written on the side of the jar.
Why do honeys taste so different?
They say that there are over a million visits to flowers in a 224 g (8 oz) jar of honey, with a bee visiting an average of 50-100 flowers on each of its foraging trips. It means the combination of flowers that will make up each jar of honey is huge and impossible to replicate – which is why every honey is different.
I absolutely love the fact that every honey is unique with a different flavour, colour or texture. Watching people’s faces when they discover it too really is one of my highlights and reminds me of exactly why I started Hive & Keeper.
Is local honey really good for you?
So many people swear by local honey and you may be able to find a honey local to you on our website. If not though then I’d just choose one that takes your fancy, as honey when it’s just spun from the frame is an amazing food.
Not only is it a fantastic prebiotic that feeds your good gut bacteria and reduces the bad ones, but it’s also anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial. We don’t fine filter or pasteurise our honey so their active ingredients remain intact and they’ll have up to 70 times more pollen in them than a ‘supermarket’ honey would.
Eat honey that’s like knobbly carrots…
Because we really do nothing to our honeys they could be described as the honey world’s equivalent of a knobbly carrot, i.e. naturally imperfect where nature, rather than cosmetic appearances, has been allowed to dominate. Don’t be put off, it’s perfect!
And while I have your attention….
According to EU figures less than 10% of honey sold in the UK is British and the number of beekeepers who sell their honey is declining too.
We’re on a mission to change this by working with a community of small-scale British beekeepers. As local shops close down beekeepers are finding it harder to sell their honey, so Hive & Keeper is helping by bringing their honeys to a wider market, showing them off, and telling their story.
Even better news is that by supporting Hive & Keeper more of us can eat locally, sustainably and healthily.
Just showing off, but…
All of this probably explains why every honey we enter for a Great Taste award wins one, and why we were shortlisted for BBC Food and Farming Producer of the Year Award. Next year we’ll win it!
Please visit www.hiveandkeeper.com to learn more and to support small scale British beekeepers. Being blunt, the more we sell the more beekeepers we can work with, so feel free to use coupon code HONEYLOVER for 10% off on our honey gift sets and subscriptions – the perfect gifts!
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