The Bee's Knees: An Interview With Hive Mind Honey-Based Drinks

With the flowers in bloom and Spring underway, the bees start to become more active with many  bumblebees emerging from hibernation foraging for early Spring flowers and gathering pollen.

To celebrate both Spring and our wonderful bees, we have this special drink in front of you today which we can’t wait for you to try.

We’ll let them do the talking, so without further ado. 

Q: Welcome to the April JOMO Box - we are excited to have you here. Can we start with an  introduction to Hive Mind for those who haven’t come across you before?  

Hello! We are beekeepers and mead makers from South Wales, specialising in making delicious drinks from our honey. We launched 6 years ago with the goal of turning mead into a contemporary alternative to beer, wine and cider, rather than a historical curiosity. We have done this by making a range of light, sparkling meads as well as a range of non-alcoholic sparkling honey based soft drinks too!

Q: Tell us about your bees!! You have built your drinks from a love of beekeeping - where did that all originate? 

My brother Matt (the other co-founder of Hive Mind) has always been a naturalist (not to be confused with a naturist). He has been beekeeping from the age of 13, and has grown our beehive collection from 20 when we launched the business, to over 200 now.

We started by selling jars of honey at the local farmers markets, but sadly due to the amount of counterfeit honey imported into the UK, this really drives down the price, and therefore perceived value of honey. It turned out to be impossible to make a living from selling purely honey as we could never compete with mass market prices. So we looked for alternative uses for our honey, and after lots of trial batches, settled on drinks.

Q: We love an origin story. May you share your journey that started in your garage to where you  are today? 

Matt and I were both keen home brewers and often made weird and occasionally wonderful concoctions in various buckets and barrels in the garage. When we were looking for alternative uses for honey we found and old description of honey beer, after lots of trial batches, the version we preferred settled on 100% honey and no malt, and it turned out we were making mead, but in a beer style and strength. We entered our first commercial batch into the Great Taste Awards and unexpectedly won a 2 Star award, which gave us the confidence to quit the day job and go all in. This has now developed into a wide range covering modern meads, traditional wine-style meads, honey beers, and now soft drinks too!

Q: Your drinks vary with the seasons? How does this happen and what are the changes?

Working with a natural product like honey, always has challenges. One such challenge is keeping the batches consistent as the honey will change from season to season depending on what the bees have been foraging on. Most noticeably, as it contains most honey, our Traditional mead does vary in flavour depending on whether it uses spring, summer or autumn honey, which are made from nectar from different flowers which bloom at different times of the year. We see this as a good thing, and something that highlights the uniqueness of honey, and real authentic products, and we have learnt to embrace the variation and go with it.

Q: You recently launched a brand new drink in your range, the one we have in front of us today.  Can you tell us what this drink is all about and why you wanted to launch this range? 

Honeyade first existed on our bar when we ran out of tonic water during a busy event. We had a batch of honey that had a sharper aftertaste and found that when we blended it with sparkling water, it was delicious! We called it Honey AF (Alcohol free, of course!) We also noticed there was an increasing consumer push back against processed food & drink, as well as a desire to consume less processed sugar, this didn’t leave a huge amount of options for the soft drinks world. We spotted a gap for a drink that was sweetened with the world’s only naturally occurring unprocessed sugar (honey), and used very minimal, simple and natural ingredients.

Q: What is your favourite way and setting to enjoy Honeyade? 

Honeyade is a bit of a social butterfly, it can adapt to a wide variety of situations. My personal favourite (Kit here) is drink a cool can after work as a great way of marking the end of the day. But I am very much looking forward to having it this summer with a picnic, or sat in the garden in the sunshine (fingers crossed).

Q: Have you made any cocktails using Honeyade? Can you share your favourite? 

Honeyade was initially invented to go into a Gin to replace the tonic, so for me that is still my favourite. Matt loves the Lime & Mint flavour as a ready made Mojoito base.

Q: Why do you think honey is the perfect core ingredient? 

We are keen to showcase real honey, and also the many diverse things that you can do with it. It is a fascinating product that varies season to season, and region to region, depending on what flowers are in season. It is unique in that by making, and selling a product with honey in, you, and the end consumer, are directly supporting nature and enabling bee numbers to grow. It directly improves nature by gathering honey. There are not many ingredients that can say that!

Honey is one of those rare ingredients that needs no additional processing to consume it, you can eat it straight from the beehive in the comb itself (if you don’t mind a few stings). Sadly it is one of the many products that has been commercialised to the point where you can’t often find ‘unprocessed’ honey to buy in the supermarkets, and with twice as much honey sold globally as produced, you can’t often be sure if it is real honey.

Honey is one of the oldest ingredients in the world. There have been honeybee fossils found dating back to 150 million years ago, so it is safe to say it has withstood the test of time.

And although we have the privilege of working with them every day, it always blows me away how fantastic bees are.

Q: Your products are 100% natural. Why was this so important to you when launching your  drinks? 

This was initially not intentional, we just never needed to do anything un-natural! We passionately believe in keeping it simple and natural, and letting the quality of the ingredients do the work.

Q: What is your favourite fact about honey and your favourite fact about bees? A: 

Favourite honey fact: Honey used to be used as currency in the Roman times to pay taxes

Favourite bee fact: A queen bee will lay more than her bodyweight of eggs each day, around 2000.

Q: To protect and support our bees, what one thing can we do?

We believe the best thing you can do is to find your local beekeeper and buy honey directly from them. This is the only way you can be sure it is 100% real, and will directly support their, and their bees livelihoods. You can also plant flowers, especially those that bloom in the spring, like Mahonia and Willow, to give them a great leg up when the weather isn't at its best.