North Wales bees making honey that's proving a supermarket bestseller

“Welsh Crunchy Heather Honey” proved a great success since hitting shelves in Marks & Spencer, with the bees going on quite a journey, with Wales at the heart of it all.

It is M&S’ first honey with crunchy crystals, delivering a distinct amber colour and a somewhat unique taste.

During the “honey making” season, the bees begin with the “Queen” in the Wainwright’s Honey bee farm in Aberystwyth.

They then travel to Bala, to the Welsh Heather Hills and Lowlands, to grow the crop of honey which has gone down a treat with M&S shoppers since launching exclusively in Wales in 2022.

Hazel Gould is a beekeeper at Wainwright’s, who works particularly on breeding the Queens.

Hazel Gould (Image: Newsquest)

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She said: “It (breeding Queens) starts at the beginning of spring, when the colonies are gearing up for the new season. Over winter, they're just hibernating - they don't normally lay any eggs.

“This normally stops before the start of June.

“The whole purpose of making the Queens is to make the next generation of hives for the next season. We do that by making a nucleus colony (nuc), which comes from an already-established colony.

“We do it in batches, and then waiting for the Queens to patch usually takes two weeks, and then we have to make the nucs which the Queens go into.

“We breed as many as we can - it's a couple of hundred a year, usually. It's just lovely to be outside, in the countryside, working with the bees.”

David Wainwright, who heads up the company, was also delighted with the bees’ honey yield in Bala this summer for their new product.

It is one of two new “Welsh” honeys they made for M&S this year, as well as the thick and creamy “Welsh Borders Honey”.

Wainwright’s’ collaboration with M&S dates back 16 years, but David has, by his own admission, “been doing this all of my life”, having started selling honey from Africa while living in Zambia.

He added: “One of the lovely things about the Queens is seeing that next generation growing. They were really successful this summer.

“We take about 500 hives to Bala, and each hive has about 50,000 workers and a queen in it - so there are a lot (of bees); we outnumber the inhabitants by quite a bit!

“There are no machines involved; it's all from our own hands. It's like rolling a dice, and luckily, we rolled a six this year

“Those two types of honey (Welsh Borders and Crunchy Heather), the flavours are totally different things.

“When we start our new colonies in the spring, we've got to give them Queens, so Hazel’s in charge of producing the Queens for the Welsh colonies.

“We've got all of these different jars of honey in different colours - if you get the honey farm by farm and keep it all separately, you get all of these different colours and flavours. That's what we're doing.”

Last year, M&S introduced 1,000 hives of British honeybees to 30 different sites on its select farms, creating a series of small batch honeys from individual apiaries, each with different shades and distinctive flavour profiles.

It proved so popular that, this year, it has been bolstered to 1,500 hives.

Hazel helps load the bees up into vans in the middle of the night, when they’re in the colonies or asleep, before they’re transported to Bala, where they can forage on the heather.

She added: “It’s been really exciting getting it into M&S. When it's a good crop, it's brilliant, and then to see it in the shelves is always exciting.

“It's a massive journey and it’s a lot of work put into it, and it's such a beautiful product. It's just really rewarding.

“It's not honey that you can produce en masse. It's a complete gamble, and even when they do well, it's still a small quantity compared to the other honeys.

“On their first morning there, the bees are already foraging. They've found the nectar and pollen, they're really busy… it's just lovely to see how far they've come

“They've got an abundance of heather up in the mountains there - more so than here - and David has built up relationships with the farmers there over 25 years, so we go back there every year.

“The honey’s taste, texture and smell all vary, depending on what plants the bees are foraged on. It’s crunchy; the texture and flavour are so different. It’s very unique.”