This #WorldBeeDay, we hear from our Operations Director, Stephen Harron on the importance of UK beekeeping.
Did you know today is #WorldBeeDay?
We love hearing about the personal environmental endeavours of our team in line with our greater sustainability ethos and one of our Divisional Directors, Stephen Harron, has shared some fascinating facts and top tips surrounding the threat and importance of local beekeeping.
Stephen has been an avid beekeeper and a member of the British Bee Keeping Association for around five years, along with approximately 25,000 others in the UK. This remarkable image was taken by Stephen and shows a frame of bees from one of his hives. You can see the queen marked with a blue dot which means she was born in 2020. Each queen will live between 3-5 years.
Did you know?
Pollinators like honey bees pollinate three quarters of the world’s flowers and about 35% of the food we eat needs bees to pollinate it – we need bees to survive on the planet!
One hive can produce 60 lb (27 kg) or more of honey
Bees fly about 55,000 miles to make one pound of honey – roughly 2.2 times around the world!
Each hive in summer would have one queen, in the region of 30,000 workers (all female) and small number of drones (males)
Bees are under threat due to loss of habitat, disease, pesticides and arguably mono-agriculture. In the US, approx. 40% of bee colonies are lost each year
Honey imported from abroad (non-EU) is thought to be heavily tampered with by the addition of inverted sugars
What can we do to help?
Everybody can play their part in the preservation of bees without having to become a beekeeper themselves. Stephen encourages people to:
- Buy local honey from beekeepers, or at least British honey to avoid the tampered imported jars
- Plant bee friendly flowers in their gardens
- Avoid swatting bees – they’re not like wasps and won’t bother anyone if they’re left alone!
- You can find out more about the fascinating lives of bees here.