Get in touch with us today
If you can't find an answer from our FAQ or you just want to say hello, just click on the prefer method for communication to reach us!
Have any questions?
Frequently Asked Questions
How should I store my honey?
For best results and to preserve its aroma and natural characteristics – please store it at room temperature and in a dry environment and please don't put your honey in the fridge - the bees keep it at 35°C at their hives, so try to get as close to them as possible.
How long does my honey last for and is it OK to eat it past the Best Before date?
If stored properly (i.e. in airtight jar and away from moisture and any contaminants), the honey will last forever. Although by law and to conform with Trading Standards regulation – we indicate Best Before date on each jar's label – this is for traceability and identifying harvest crops and just a guideline and not indicative of its longevity of life. However, we promise you – once you open that jar and try it – you'll love it and the honey will not last even until it's best before date, but if it does – it's perfectly safe and OK to consume even past that. If in any doubt – please contact us for advice.
Why do your honeys have different names?
We're naming the honeys after the apiary location where the bees were at the time they collected the honey, so you know exactly where your honey comes from and can link it to a real life area/location. So, this is why you can have different looking honeys from different batches under the same label – meaning that the bees at that apiary have had different crops that season (i.e. spring crop which may be soft set and then followed by a summer crop, which may be runny and clear).
Is your honey RAW?
Our honey has not been pasteurised, heat treated, or processed in any way by chemicals or any additives. It's simply taken from the hives, extracted from the honeycomb, filtered trough 5 separate filters, then stored in special pales until it's ready to be jarred. Sometimes we do need to warm it ever so gently to help it flow easier, but never above hive temperature to preserve the natural enzymes. Therefore, the honey is never cooked, boiled, baked, roasted etc and in that respect its's raw. But all honeys are raw, as if you cook, boil, bake etc them – they'll cease to exist and no longer are honeys – they'll turn into mead, honey cakes, ice-cream etc. Also Advertising Standards in UK does not permit the use of word ‘raw' to describe honey as this would imply as it's somehow different from the rest of the honeys, so we would never put the word ‘raw' on our labels, instead, we name the honey of each batch after the apiary location, so you know exactly where it comes from and where the bees made it for you.
Is your honey organic?
No, it is not. Our bees can fly up to a 5km radius from their hives, and since some of our apiaries are located in populated areas, the bees may visit plants in people's gardens, crops, shrubs, trees, and roadsides. As a result, we cannot guarantee that every plant visited by the bees was organic or free from man-made chemicals, such as fertilizers, pesticides, paints, stains, or detergents. However, all of our apiaries are situated in remote areas—some more isolated than others, like the vast heather moors around the Cairn O' Mount apiary, compared to the more populated Fettercairn village, which serves as the feeding ground for the Fettercairn apiary. While we carefully select these locations for their limited human activity and pollution, we cannot claim that the bees exclusively visit organically grown plants for nectar collection.
How do you process the honey? I'd like to know what my honey had been trough before it ended on my breakfast table.
The honey from each apiary is taken separately from the rest and extracted on its own to ensure its unique pollen content, aroma and flavour signature is preserved. This is the equivalent of single malt whisky, where the whisky is made in one distillery only and not blended from different sources. The honeycombs on their frames are taken from the apiary to our extraction room where every single one is uncapped by hand and placed in a honey extractor, where by centrifugal forces, the honeycombs are spined to extract the honey from them. The extracted honey is then filtered trough 5 individual filters to remove any hard particles, bits of beeswax, large pollen granules etc (1 conical filter on the extractor tap removes the biggest particles and aids further flowing; then a double round filter, fitted with a coarse and finer mesh works further to filter the honey and at the end another 2 finer nylon conical filters are finishing of the job, the last finest one being 500 microns). Once the honey is filtered – it's stored in special pales (food safe hermetically closing plastic buckets) labelled with each name, batch, refractive index (to indicate water content of honey in each bucket) and left to settle until it's ready to be jarred at a later stage. When we're jarring your honey – we work from each batch at a time to ensure stock rotation and traceability. Once filled - all jars are then stored at stable room temperature until it's their turn to be taken to markets, events, parcels etc and find their way to your breakfast table.
My honey crystalised in the jar, is it okay to eat it in this form and how to make it runny again?
All pure honey granulates or becomes solid/thicker in cool conditions. In fact, this change is the best proof of its quality! It can easily be restored back to its liquid state – just stand the jar in hot water or microwave it (on low setting and for 1 minute at a time) until liquid again and store it at warm room temperature conditions to slow re-crystalisation.