Sarah and the Bees of Royal Deeside
Some suppliers feel like suppliers. Others feel like old friends.
Sarah is firmly in the second camp.
Long before Natives existed as a brand, before labels and maps and online stores, there was Sarah with her bees, on a stretch of land in Royal Deeside that quietly produces some of the most honest honey we’ve ever tasted.
A family, a place, and a lifetime with bees
Sarah runs a small family beekeeping business in Deeside, with occasional help from her four sons. Beekeeping in this part of the world has a long history, very closely linked to the Aberdeen Agricultural College that was the centre of the beekeeping studies in the most part of the 20th century until it's been moved to the West coast.
Beekeeping here is physical, seasonal, and completely exposed to the Scottish weather - which Sarah often laughs about, usually while standing in the rain next to a hive.
She’s also a mentor with the local beekeeping community in Tarland, and a Trustee of the Scottish Native Honey Bee Society - quietly doing the unglamorous work of keeping native bees alive, healthy, and genetically resilient.
Honey that changes because nature does
One of the questions Sarah gets asked most is why her honey changes so much — colour, texture, flavour, even aroma.
The answer is simple: it’s real.
Honey is nothing more (and nothing less) than the nectar processed by bees. When bees are working oilseed rape in spring, the honey is pale, mild, soft-set, and almost whipped in texture. When they move onto bell or ling heather later in the season, everything changes - darker colour, deeper flavour, medicinal bitterness, and a jelly-like structure that resists the spoon.
And then there are the in-between moments: blossom honeys drawn from dozens of trees, hedgerows, and wildflowers. Those are never the same twice. Different weather, different bloom windows, different weeks of foraging - different honey.
As Sarah puts it: we’re completely at the mercy of the season. And that’s exactly the point.
Birkhall: where we filmed, talked, and listened
When I filmed Sarah at her Birkhall apiary, the conversation drifted the way it always does with experienced beekeepers. Less about yields and more about watching the bees, the weather, the land.
She talks about learning patience. About accepting losses. About swarms, those dramatic moments when half a colony decides to leave, taking a queen with them, and why that isn’t failure but rather a renewal.
Standing there, you realise something important: honey like this can’t be scaled without breaking it. And it shouldn’t be.
Why Sarah’s honey is at the heart of Natives
Natives exists to connect honey back to land and people — not just flavour notes and pretty jars. Sarah’s honey does that naturally. It carries Deeside in it: the heather moors, the oilseed fields, the wet summers and the rare, perfect weeks when everything aligns.
This is honey with a postcode, a season, and a human face behind it.
If you want to taste what Royal Deeside gives in a good year - and how different spring and heather honeys can really be - you’ll find Sarah’s jars waiting for you.
Explore Sarah’s honeys in the shop
Honey of land.