Derbyshire honey runs from spring oilseed rape and summer lime in the lowlands to heather from the Peak District moors. Some producers here move hives to the moors in late summer: The Honey Pot takes colonies into the Peak District for heather honey, and Little Friends' Honey sells a heather honey from Hathersage alongside single-apiary honeys from Ticknall and Mickleover. In the north-east of the county, Whitwell Honey and Bees jars oilseed rape, lime, field bean and moorland honeys separately.
The Derbyshire Beekeepers Association holds an annual honey show in October, recently at Carsington Water and open to the public, and has a tent with beekeeping displays and honey sales at the Derbyshire County Show.
Most honey here is bought direct. Ogston Bee Farm, on the edge of Ogston Reservoir, extracts and packs its honey at the farm; Medibee has a bee shop at Troway Hall; The Honey Pot has a shop at Trent Business Centre in Long Eaton and is also stocked at Croots Farm Shop near Duffield; and Hope Valley Honey, based at Eyam with apiaries around Calver, Grindleford, Hope and Hathersage, makes its honey and beeswax goods on site. Several smaller beekeepers sell from home, so get in touch before visiting.
The heather is the county's headline crop. Ling covers the moors above Glossop, Hathersage and Baslow, flowering from late July, and hives are carried up to the moor edge in August in a tradition that goes back generations here. It is hard-won honey: the weather at that altitude ruins the crop as often as it makes it. On the limestone, the dales carry an unusually rich flora — thyme, marjoram, knapweed, scabious — across grassland that has never been ploughed or fertilised, which gives a complex summer honey quite unlike lowland blossom. Lower down, the Derwent valley and the farmland south of Derby offer oilseed rape, hawthorn and clover, and Derby's parks and lime avenues support a solid urban crop.
Heather honey from the moors is dark, aromatic and thixotropic — it sets like jelly and has to be pressed rather than spun. Limestone dale honey is lighter but complex and herbal.
Flowering times are typical and can shift by two to three weeks with the weather, season and altitude.
Derby, Chesterfield, Buxton, Matlock, Bakewell, Ashbourne, Glossop, Ilkeston
Three reasons: the hives have to be physically transported to the moor and back, the crop fails outright in a wet August, and ling heather honey will not spin out of the comb in an extractor — it has to be pressed or sold as cut comb. The yield per hive is a fraction of a normal summer crop.
The Dark Peak's acid moorland gives heather honey — dark, jelly-textured, strongly aromatic. The White Peak's limestone dales give a lighter, herbal, wildflower honey from thyme, marjoram and knapweed on unimproved grassland. They are genuinely different products from apiaries perhaps fifteen miles apart.
Use the listing details to choose how to buy, then contact the producer before travelling.
The directory does not track live stock or harvest dates. Availability, collection, delivery, prices and seasonal varieties can change, so ask the producer to confirm what is currently available.
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