Hive & Keeper: Keeping it Natural & British
Before I started beekeeping in my London back garden I'd thought that all honey tasted ‘like honey’ – same flavour, same textures.
I was TOTALLY wrong!
It never ceases to amaze me how different honey is when it's straight from the hive and left to its own thing. No blending, no heating, no huge vats of honey and mass production, just Hive & Keeper buying our honeys from local beekeepers across the country who can tell us exactly where and when that honey was made.
They say there is over a million visits to flowers in one of our jars of honey so no wonder each one is so different, it's a combination of flowers that's impossible to replicate.
I am passionate about showing people what honey tastes like when it's texture, colour and tastes aren't made to be the same. Not only is that boring but it disconnects us from nature and everything that's incredible about the bees that made it.
And so Hive & Keeper was born. A curation of British limited edition small batch honeys, each naturally different. Championing British bees and small scale beekeepers and keeping provenance, great design, the natural world and treading lightly on the planet at the heart of what we do.
My beekeeping hobby opened my eyes to what 'natural' really meant when it came to honey - it wasn't too much of a leap to start to notice that when something was sold as being 'natural' and 'British' it didn't necessarily mean ALL 100% natural and British.
'Made in the UK' doesn't necessarily mean that it was all made in the UK and 'Made with British wool' doesn't necessarily mean all the wool used comes from British sheep... This feels like a con, or at best pushing the truth!
Just like 'supermarket' honey everything is made to look the same - all of the natural character from a leather or wood is cut out and wasted. But just as honey showed us, nature is never the same, and we love reflecting that difference.
We work with British artisans and heritage industries to create beautiful lifestyle products to make home even more wonderful. Everything is 100% British, from start to finish.
Our designs embrace the natural variation in the British leathers, woods, wools and honeys we use to make beautiful things for your home.
We refuse to tick-box or to mislead you with marketing-speak that’s only sort of true, so when we say something we mean it.
If you see our Queen Bee on the label you'll know that she's there because:
- We know exactly how and where in the UK it was made
- It is made completely from natural materials without plastics or synthetics
- it is made in the UK by people who love what they do and take their environmental responsibilities seriously
