Comb
Close-up of bees crawling over golden honeycomb cells.

Honey from thirty hives on four farms, sold from a table outside a garage.

A jar of dark golden honey tied with string, a wooden dipper dripping into it.

Spring · Hollins Farm

Oilseed and blackthorn

Pale, sets within weeks, spreads like butter. The first honey of the year, taken off in May before the bees need it.

£7.50 a jar
Golden honey pouring from a wooden dipper into an open glass jar.

Summer · the river meadows

Clover and bramble

Runny, light, the one people mean when they say "honey". We have more of it than anything else.

£7 a jar
A honey dipper lifted over a jar of dark honey.

Late summer · Crag Moor

Heather

Dark, thick, a little bitter, and it will not pour. Thirty jars a year, and they go by September.

£11 a jar
Rows of capped and open honeycomb glowing amber.

Every jar has the farm, the month and the hive number on the lid.

A day at the hives

Once a month from May to August, four people at a time. You wear a suit, open a hive with me, find the queen if she will let us, and go home with a jar from that hive.

Duration10:00–14:00, lunch included

Groupfour people, age twelve and up

Price£85, suit and jar included

Before you come

A smiling woman in a beekeeping veil holding up a frame covered in bees.
Gloved hands lifting a frame of honeycomb and bees out of a wooden hive.

Before you come to the hives

Allergies, honestly

If you have ever swelled up badly from a sting, do not come. If you do not know, that is normal — we keep an allergy kit on site and a car ready.

What to wear

Long trousers, boots, nothing dark and nothing fluffy. No perfume, no hairspray. We supply the suit, veil and gloves.

If a bee gets inside the veil

Walk away slowly, not quickly, and tell me. It happens once a summer, and the bee wants out more than you do.

Weather

We only open hives when it is warm and dry. If not, we move the date; nobody pays twice.

A beekeeper in white holding up a frame dotted with bees against low sun. Pale honey dripping from a dipper into a glass jar tied with string. A gloved hand with a hive tool beside a frame crowded with bees. Honeybees flying in front of a hive entrance against a green background.