The British Beekeeping Association (BBKA) is trying to encourage the public to appreciate the benefits of British honey. As part of their campaign they have set up National Honey Day. This will be an annual event, the first will be in just over a week on the 21st of October. This is a great thing for small-scale beekeepers like us. We’ve put together 4 reasons why you should support this special day.

1. A great deal of “honey” that is imported into this country isn’t real honey

Honey is said to be one of the most adulterated foods in the world. Unscrupulous sellers have been found to cut honey with things like corn or rice syrup to make it go further. There is an excellent episode in the series called Rotton available on Netflix about this shady business. Buying directly from your local beekeeper means that you can ask them in person about how their honey is produced.

2. Honey is poorly labelled

At present, the rules about labeling honey for sale mean that the country of origin can be a complete mystery. Putting a jar of honey in a shop with a label that says “A blend of EU and non-EU honey” is perfectly acceptable. This gives no information about where the honey originally came from. The BBKA has started a petition to try and get honey labeling changed. You can sign it here: /https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/honeycake_67599

3. Learn to taste unblended honey

A lot of commercially produced honey is a mixture of honey from various places. The goal of these companies is to produce a consistant product. If you buy a jar of honey of theirs from anywhere in the country it’ll look and taste the same.

I think that this is such a shame – one of the great delights of honey is noticing the variation of flavours, textures, and colours from hive to hive and season to season. I always think that it’d be like collecting all the grapes in France to make “French Wine”. It would be crazy, yet this is exactly what happens with honey.

If you buy honey from a local producer it is likely that you are buying honey that has been made locally. You can always ask them where the honey is from. Lots of small-scale beekeepers now put the postcode of where the hives are situated on their labels, so you can see for yourself.

4. Support a small business

For National Honey Day the BBKA is encouraging everyone to buy a jar of local honey from the UK. If you do this, you will be supporting UK beekeepers, many are small businesses that will be so happy to introduce you to your local honey.

To celebrate World Bee Day next Thursday, I’m partnering with Capital Gardens to bring you a free webinar called “Bees in the Garden – Planting Flowers to Attract Bees”. Colin Campbell-Preston and I will be talking about all things bee and will be giving lots of tips on selecting the best plants to provide quality forage and habitat for bees.

It will be taking place on 20th May at 12:30pm. It is completely free, but you do need to register. Sign up here

Lots of the plants that we will discuss are covered in my book “80 Flowers for Bees” – available to buy here

Edit: if you missed the live webinar, you can watch the recording here.

What an extraordinary spring we are having this year. Lockdown has kept us at home, with only brief journeys out to check on the bees. The beautiful weather has meant that many flowers are early this year – our colonies have built up quickly and are busy piling in the pollen and nectar. The smell of spring nectar when we open the hives is intoxicating.

School from home has now settled down into some kind of routine for us – it turns out that my son is very enthusiastic about helping with the bees. He surprised me with his knowledge – it’s good to know that he does pay attention to some of the bee things that we discuss!

We are fortunate to live very close to Hampstead Heath – most days we venture out there for a walk. We’ve loved exploring areas that we’d somehow overlooked in the past. It has also been wonderful to see the trees coming into bloom week by week. This magnificent Horse Chestnut is currently plastered in flowers, all buzzing nicely with bees.

We try to have something in flower in our garden at all times of the year that will provide some pollen and nectar to any passing insects. January and February are often perceived as the gloomiest months of the year, but our garden still has a few offerings.

This lovely viburnum has been flowering for a couple of months now – It seems to like being in our shady North facing front garden – the scent is divine, I sometimes get wafts of it as we come and go from the house.

Also in our front garden, is this rosemary – which again has been flowering on and off for a month or so. It’s so handy to be able to pick a sprig when I need a bit for cooking.

I’m a big fan of hellebore and we have quite a few different colours of them – this is the first to flower this year.

These little charmers are just about to open too – so pretty, I just love them.

And just in time for Burns Night, we have some heather flowering!

This year the BBKA (British Beekeepers Association) have to decided to have a special Asian Hornet week from 10th to 16th September.

Beekeepers are concerned about the spread of Asian Hornets because a large part of their diet is honey bees. Apparently each hornet can eat 200 honey bees every day – it is easy to see how a honey bee colony could be decimated very quickly by a nest of these hornets.

Asian Hornets originated from Southeast Asia, but has been steadily spreading. They were first accidentally introduced into France in 2004 and have now spread over the whole country. Significant numbers of honey bee colonies have been lost.

This year several nests have been discovered on Jersey.

Last week an Asian Hornet was spotted by a beekeeper in Fowey in Cornwall. The National Bee Unit was able to track the hornet to its nest, which was then destroyed. Today there is news that there have been two more sightings in Hull and Liskeard.

The BBKA are asking all beekeepers to take some time over this week to watch their hives. The Asian Hornets will hover outside the hive and grab bees as they head home.

It is important for us to be able to correctly identify the Asian Hornet correctly and not to confuse it with the European Hornet and other large insects.

If you think that you spot one, please report it to alertnonnative@ceh.ac.uk ideally with a photograph. Don’t try and catch one as they have a sting!

There is also a useful app which has pictures to help with ID – it’s called “Asian Hornet Watch”

This is a very serious threat to our honey bees and native insects – please do keep an eye out and report any sightings promptly.