Leicestershire's beekeepers have been organised since 1882, when the Leicestershire and Rutland Beekeepers Association was founded. It now runs teaching apiaries at Walton, Markfield and Brooksby, and its bee tent tours local summer shows.
Honey here comes from farmland, estates and villages across the county. Temple Bees, based at Measham, keeps around 200 colonies on some 20 sites from Appleby Magna to Cadeby and Prestwold Hall near Loughborough, with separate small-batch honeys from Newtown Linford and Mountsorrel. In the north-east, Peacock Farm at Muston jars honey from its own hives and from local beekeepers' colonies in the Vale of Belvoir, while Pollen Hill Bee Farm at Houghton-on-the-Hill breeds its own local bees for unprocessed wildflower honey.
Many producers are small. Dave's Leicestershire Honey is a hobby beekeeper who sold local producers' honey on Leicestershire's markets for 27 years before keeping bees himself; and Frolesworth Honey sells runny, soft-set and comb honey in the south of the county. Hall Farm Dadlington's Bosworth in Bloom honey is sold mainly to guests staying at the farm, with delivery to others by arrangement.
Charnwood's woods and heathy commons bring sycamore, sweet chestnut, bilberry and bramble, along with scattered heather on the acid ground — a small upland-flavoured crop in a lowland county. Across the rest of the county, mixed farming supplies oilseed rape in spring, field beans in June and hedgerow hawthorn and blackthorn throughout. The National Forest planting programme in the west has added many thousands of young broadleaves over the last thirty years, and as they mature they are steadily improving forage in what was mining and quarrying country. The Soar valley carries willow and balsam, and Leicester itself has substantial parkland lime and a growing number of urban apiaries.
Standard mixed blossom across most of the county — medium amber, floral, sets fine. Charnwood apiaries produce a darker, woodier honey.
Flowering times are typical and can shift by two to three weeks with the weather, season and altitude.
Leicester, Loughborough, Hinckley, Melton Mowbray, Market Harborough, Coalville, Wigston, Ashby-de-la-Zouch
In very small amounts. Charnwood Forest has patches of acid heath carrying ling and bell heather, but nothing on the scale of the Peak or the Pennines. Any Leicestershire honey with a heather character is likely to be a blend rather than a pure heather crop — worth asking the producer what is actually in it.
Steadily improving forage. Millions of broadleaf trees planted across west Leicestershire since the 1990s are now reaching flowering maturity, adding sycamore, lime, willow and cherry to land that was previously quarry and colliery ground. Apiaries in that area have measurably more to work with than they did a generation ago.
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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