FEATURED PRODUCER – NORTHUMBERLAND HONEY

Born out of love for Champagne and a passion for beekeeping.

As beekeepers, Northumberland Honey has had to keep looking after the bees, despite the pandemic. “We have increased the number of bees we keep to over 200 colonies now,” they tell us.

“Fortunately online sales have been maintained, and we are also focusing on breeding bees that have great disease resistance and survivability. An old beekeeper once told us if you look after the bees, they will look after you, and that is exactly what we’ve been focusing on with not being able to attend events. This has led to a significant increase in the number of bees we keep, and also has enabled us to increase honey and sparkling mead production this year.”

NORTHUMBERLAND HONEY’S STORY
Re-wind to 2015, and an idea was born out of a passion for bees, Champagne, and honey.
Meeting whilst Suzie was doing a PhD, Luke and Suzie have always had a passion for bees, starting out as hobby beekeepers back in 2015 with no idea where their beekeeping journey would take them. Combining Suzie’s science background and their joint love of bees, champagne and honey, an idea was formed and many trials followed to see if you could make the bee equivalent of Champagne!

First came the bees, as is always the case, you need a good strong foraging force of bees to produce honey! Over the Past couple of years, 40 colonies has increased to a present day number of 200.

“We are all about safeguarding the future of the honey bee, increasing their sustainability and number. Going from 2015 to present day, we have increased the bee numbers in Northumberland by around 20 million bees!! That’s 500 bees for every glass of Sparkling Mead consumed!

“We’re now giving people an easy, passive way to help the bees! Drink different, drink better! To get to where we are today has taken plenty of research, plenty of product development. Starting out in the early days Luke and Suzie spent time in Champagne learning the méthode tradionelle but also travelled to the USA, where mead is very popular and meaderies a plenty, to learn about making mead on a commercial scale.”

Wildflower Sparkling Mead was the first mead from Northumberland Honey Co to be launched, and found itself in November 2016 heading out of the meadery. Since then the range of Sparkling Meads have found their way into some of the country’s best restaurants, and homes!

Fast forward to 2020 and a very difficult year with many shows and events cancelled due to Covid-19. But the bees still pushed on and had to be cared for. 2020 saw the addition of the 37.5cl Wildflower Sparkling Mead and we now await the greatly anticipated release of our first four year aged vintage later in the year. A truely special bottle of Sparkling Mead that will be a celebration in it’s own right and limited to only 50 bottles.

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