Many people think of mead as something of historical interest, but good mead is delicious and surprisingly easy to make. Hugh & Fiona Osborne are on a mission to bring mead back to smallholders and small farmers…
If we offer someone a glass of mead, even people raised in the country, we usually get a reply filled with trepidation. Something along the lines of “Ummm…sure…I suppose…why not? I mean I’ve never tried it”.
It seems a pity to us that such an amazing drink is now enjoyed so rarely. Mead does take time and a quantity of good quality honey to make but smallholders are the best people to make and enjoy this vanishing treat.
AMAZING HONEY
The process of bees producing honey is a fascinating one. A bee will collect nectar from plants and use its natural enzymes and proteins to convert the complex sugars in the nectar into the simple sugars of honey. The bees then warm the hive causing water to evaporate from the honey until it is stable for storage and finally “cap” the honey, sealing it as a food supply for winter and times when nectar is less abundant.
Bees will fly over 50,000miles to produce a pound of honey, along the way increasing crop and fruit yields by pollination by up to 30% and producing fantastic beeswax for hand creams, furniture polish and more.
There are many good reasons to keep bees, and honey can be thought of as a bonus, but a strong hive can produce a surplus of 25 pounds of honey per year and many smallholders keep multiple hives.
ALL HONEY IS NOT EQUAL
The Honey Authenticity Network recently tested 30 UK honey samples using DNA testing to validate whether they were pure honey. All 5 samples sourced directly from UK beekeepers were found to be authentic. Of the 25 samples sourced from shops, 96% were considered “suspicious”. Imported honey has been found to be adulterated with sugar syrup for example. Figures are disputed but last year an EU study suspected that 46% of all samples tested (and 100% of those from the UK) were fraudulent.
We are by no means experts in analysing honey but if we are going to take the time and trouble to make mead, we want to be certain that we are using honey and not sugar water! Of course, it is not possible for all of us to keep bees. Whilst we did for many years, Fiona developed a very nasty bee sting allergy, and it was simply too risky to continue, so these days we source ours from an amazing local beekeeper, Andy Wattham from Withamside Honey. The joy of sourcing honey from someone like Andy (who now “only” runs 40 hives because of his other activities) is that he can offer us a choice of honey.
This article extract was taken from the March 2025 edition of The Country Smallholder. To read the article in full, you can buy the issue here.
