Heather Honey

Bees really don’t get the credit (or the cash) they deserve.
If you find a skilled beekeeper to look after their environment and manage their hives, the bees do pretty much everything else. They diligently collect all the nectar; build, warm and defend the hives; and then make the honey.

And the honey they produce is so pure that all you need do is remove the honeycomb and then bottle the honey. It doesn’t need any form of treatment and processing.

Our honey is sourced from beekeeper Murray McGregor, who tends the hives on the Balmoral estate in Scotland and whose bees harvest nectar from the wild heather of the Highlands.

There’s two main types of heather in that part of the country: Bell heather which is purple and appears early in the summer, and Ling heather, which is pink and late flowering. The Bell gives Highland honey great richness while the Ling gives it a delicious sharpness.

The one downside of getting bees to do all the work is that they’re very sensitive to the cold. By crowding together, they keep the hive a cosy and constant 37 degrees Celsius. However, they’ll only gather nectar if the outside hits 10 degrees Celsius, which means a cold snap in July or August, when most honey is made, can badly affect production.

And that means it’s not uncommon for the yield from Balmoral to double or half from one year to the next depending on the weather. Maybe we should start paying those bees after all...