Why Buy Honey From a Local Beekeeper?

A jar of honey looks like a remarkably simple thing. Bees collect nectar, the beekeeper harvests the honey and eventually somebody spreads it on toast. Yet behind every jar is a particular colony of bees, a particular landscape and a particular season, and those things can make one honey noticeably different from another.

Buying honey directly from a local beekeeper gives you an opportunity to understand some of that story. You can ask where the bees are kept, when the honey was harvested and what was flowering at the time. You may even discover that honey produced only a few miles apart can differ in colour, aroma, flavour and texture.

For us, that is one of the most interesting things about honey. It is not simply a sweetener manufactured to a standard recipe; it reflects what was available to the bees when they were collecting nectar.

Honey tastes of where the bees have been

Honey bees can forage over a considerable area around their hive, visiting thousands of flowers in the process. The nectar available to them changes as different plants come into flower, which means the character of the resulting honey can change too.

A colony surrounded by flowering oilseed rape in spring may produce a pale honey that crystallises rapidly, while honey gathered later in the season from a different mixture of flowers may remain liquid for much longer and have a completely different flavour.

Weather plays its part as well. A plant can be flowering abundantly without necessarily producing large quantities of nectar, and temperature and rainfall can affect both the plants and the opportunities bees have to forage.

This is why a beekeeper cannot simply instruct the bees to make exactly the same honey every year.

From Tristan’s Notebook

People sometimes ask me what flavour the bees are making, as though I've given them a recipe. The honest answer is that the bees decide. What is flowering, what is producing nectar and what they choose to work will all end up influencing what eventually comes out of the hive.

What does “local honey” actually mean?

There is no magical boundary at which honey suddenly becomes local. For most people, the phrase simply means honey produced reasonably close to where they live and, ideally, supplied by a beekeeper whose identity and location they can establish.

Buying directly from a beekeeper gives you something particularly useful: the ability to ask questions.

Where are the apiaries? When was the honey harvested? Has it been blended with honey from elsewhere? Why has this jar crystallised while another remains runny? What might the bees have been foraging on?

A good beekeeper should be comfortable answering those questions.

That traceability is a much better reason to seek out local honey than some of the more extravagant claims occasionally made on its behalf.

Will eating local honey cure hay fever?

This is probably one of the most persistent claims surrounding local honey.

The theory sounds plausible: honey may contain pollen, so regularly eating honey produced nearby might somehow desensitise somebody to the pollen causing their seasonal allergy.

Unfortunately, there isn't good evidence that ordinary local honey is an effective treatment for hay fever. The pollens that commonly trigger hay fever are often wind-borne pollens from grasses and trees, whereas bees primarily collect pollen from flowers they visit.

That does not make local honey any less enjoyable. It simply means we should appreciate it for what it is rather than promise something it has not been shown reliably to do.

At Norfolk Bees, we would much rather tell you something fascinating that honey genuinely does than invent a health benefit because it sounds good on a label.

Is local honey healthier?

“Local”, “raw”, “pure”, “natural” and “unprocessed” are often used together in discussions about honey, but they do not all mean the same thing.

Honey being produced locally does not automatically tell you how it has subsequently been handled, just as crystallisation does not prove that honey is raw or authentic.

Honey consists predominantly of sugars and should be treated as such in the diet. It also contains smaller quantities of other naturally occurring compounds, but describing it as a health food or presenting it as a nutritionally superior alternative to sugar can give a misleading impression.

There are recognised specialist medical uses for appropriately prepared medical-grade honey, particularly in wound care, but that should not be confused with applying an ordinary jar of breakfast honey to an injury.

Honey is a wonderful food. It does not need imaginary powers to make it interesting.

What about beeswax?

Honey is only one material produced within a hive.

Worker honey bees produce beeswax and use it to build the comb in which the colony raises brood and stores honey and pollen. For the beekeeper, recovered beeswax can become a useful product in its own right.

Traditionally, beeswax has found its way into candles, furniture and leather preparations, polishes and a variety of craft products. Its colour and aroma can vary according to its source and how it has been cleaned and processed.

There is something rather satisfying about a material made by the bees being cleaned, prepared and given another useful life rather than simply being discarded.

And propolis?

Propolis is another fascinating hive material. Bees collect resins from plants and use the resulting substance within the colony, particularly around small gaps and surfaces in the hive.

Anyone who has tried to separate hive components firmly glued together with propolis will appreciate just how effective the bees are at using it.

Propolis is widely sold commercially in supplements and other products, often accompanied by extensive health claims. Those claims need to be treated carefully. The fact that bees use a substance inside their colony does not automatically mean that consuming it will produce a particular medical benefit in humans.

From a beekeeper's perspective, however, understanding what propolis is and watching how bees use it is fascinating in itself.

From Tristan’s Notebook

You don't need a laboratory test to discover that bees take propolis seriously. Try opening a hive they've thoroughly glued together with it. You'll understand fairly quickly.

Supporting a beekeeper means more than buying honey

If you buy a jar directly from a beekeeper, the obvious benefit to that beekeeper is that you have bought something they produced. However, there are plenty of other ways people can become involved with local beekeeping without ever owning a hive themselves.

Visiting an apiary, attending a beekeeping experience, learning about pollinators, planting a varied range of flowering plants or simply becoming better at distinguishing honey bees from bumblebees and wasps all help build a more informed relationship with the insects living around us.

Local beekeeping associations also play an important role in education and in helping new beekeepers develop their skills. If keeping bees yourself is beginning to appeal, speaking to experienced local beekeepers before buying equipment is one of the most useful first steps you can take.

What can you do for bees at home?

You do not need a hive to make your garden useful to pollinating insects. A garden containing different flowering plants across as much of the year as possible can provide forage not only for honey bees but also for bumblebees, solitary bees and many other insects. Allowing some less manicured areas to develop and thinking carefully about pesticide use can also make a difference to the variety of wildlife a garden supports.

It is worth remembering that honey bees are only one part of a much larger pollinator community. Supporting bees should not mean concentrating exclusively on the species that happens to produce something we can put in a jar.

A jar with a story behind it

Perhaps the best reason to buy honey from a local beekeeper is also the simplest: you know more about what you are buying. The beekeeper can tell you about the bees, the season and the area in which they forage. When the next batch looks lighter, tastes different or sets more quickly, there is somebody you can ask why.

That connection between beekeeper, bees and landscape is something mass-produced food understandably struggles to provide.

At Norfolk Bees, we want people to become curious about what is inside the jar rather than simply regard honey as another sweet substance in the cupboard. The more you learn about how bees produce it, the more remarkable an apparently simple jar of honey becomes.

And if your local jar suddenly turns cloudy and crystallises?

Don't panic. We've got an article about that too.