About Us

We are Nigel and Caroline Collier and we are based in Measham which is officially Swadlincote, Derbyshire but in North West Leicestershire council area.

In 2013, Nigel woke up one morning and had to keep bees.  At the time, Nigel was a self-employed engineer who didn’t like either plants or gardening, and had never had anything to do with bees! After attending  a course in Derby over the summer two hives were purchased, which then grew to fifteen, then twenty, and by 2017 there were fifty colonies. 

Ongoing health issues had repeatedly given Nigel medical advice to give up the engineering, so at the end of 2019/early 2020, that’s what we did, transforming the engineering workshop at home into a five-star rated food premises, which is both our extraction room and where the honey is jarred.   The health issues dictated as much automation as possible was needed, and we have now one of the biggest extraction lines in the midlands.

The business continues to grow, as do the colony numbers, and so at the end of May 2025, wife Caroline gave up life in the corporate world to join the business full time.  We now supply nearly 40 retail outlets, regularly attend a number of farmers markets and give talks to many groups like the Women's Institute, Gardening Groups, U3A.  

We take a real pride in our bees, and our products.  We look to remove all unnecessary plastics from our processes, and everything in our products is either recycled or recyclable.  

We now run around 200 colonies of honey bees across around 20 sites reaching from Appleby Magna, across to Cadeby and then to Prestwold Hall in Loughborough, with two sites also in South Derbyshire near Calke Abbey.  Our 9 million bees produce high quality honey from mainly organic farms, rewilded areas, and farms who are supporting the growing of wildflowers.  Our honey is extracted and jarred at our five-star hygiene rated facility in Measham shown above.  From this, we jar this natural, unpasteurised honey using the absolute minimum of processing necessary.  Our main 5 honeys have won Great Taste Awards, which is an unmatched achievement in either South Derbyshire or Leicestershire.