Local Honey Caldicot

Mead and raw Wye Valley honey from Hive Mind Mead & Brew Co, a meadery in Caldicot, Monmouthshire, started in 2018 by brothers Matt and Kit Newell under the name Wye Valley Meadery.

Matt has kept bees since he was 13, and the brothers look after hives at more than 20 sites in the lower Wye Valley. Their bees keep their own honey to overwinter on, and queens are bred from locally adapted bees, many of them rescued from roofs and building sites nearby. All the honey their bees produce goes into their products, and the meads are made from 100% British honey rather than a white-wine base sweetened with sugar.

The range covers traditional wine-style meads, including a dry Welsh heather mead and barrel-aged meads, sparkling session meads, honey beers, a spiced honey rum and a honey soft drink called Honeyade. Their Wye Valley Traditional Mead won the Golden Fork for Wales in 2023. They also sell jars of raw Wye Valley honey – unfiltered, unblended, not heat-treated and from a single source, so it changes with the season – and overwintered nucleus colonies of bees for collection.

The drinks and honey can be ordered online for UK delivery, and the drinks are stocked by independent shops, bars and some Co-op stores. At the Caldicot brewery they hold a monthly taproom night with live music and street food, and run mead-making workshops; half-day beekeeping courses take place at Caldicot Castle and nearby apiaries.