Herefordshire is cider country, and cider country is orchard country. Add hop yards, old meadows and the wooded Wye valley and you have a county that has kept more traditional farmed landscape than most — which shows in the honey.
Apple blossom in late April and May is the county's most distinctive flow, coming from thousands of acres of cider orchard as well as the dessert-fruit growing around Ledbury and Bromyard. Traditional orchards with old standard trees and unimproved grass beneath them are still relatively common here, and they are excellent bee ground. The Wye and Lugg valleys bring willow, hawthorn and a long bramble season; the woodland on the Welsh border adds sycamore, lime and, in some summers, honeydew from aphids on the conifers and limes. Herefordshire also retains more species-rich hay meadow than most English counties, which supports a genuine wildflower forage in June.
Light and fragrant from the spring orchard crop; the summer honey is fuller and darker, and occasional honeydew years produce something almost black and treacly.
Flowering times are typical and can shift by two to three weeks with the weather, season and altitude.
Hereford, Leominster, Ross-on-Wye, Ledbury, Bromyard, Kington, Weobley, Pembridge
Some beekeepers take a spring super off after the orchard blossom and bottle it separately — it is pale and delicately scented. It is a small, early crop, usually available from June, and most years it gets blended into the main summer honey instead. Ask producers around Ledbury and Bromyard directly.
Honeydew honey is made from aphid secretions on trees rather than flower nectar. It is very dark, malty and low in sugar crystals, so it stays runny. It appears in some years in the wooded border country of west Herefordshire — irregular, unpredictable, and prized by people who know it.
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