Want to Be an Apprentice Beefarmer? Aged between 16-24?

We are delighted that the Beefarmers Association has developed an apprenticeship scheme. It is exactly the sort of programme I would have liked to do when I started as the modules are very varied and cover lots of aspects. It is still shocking that 85% of honey 
eaten in Britain is imported despite the growing public interest in honey and beekeeping. We are keen to bring on the next generation of beekeepers who are equipped to deal with the complex issues facing both pollinators and food producers but ultimately to produce top quality honey for people to enjoy. We love our job and think an apprentice will too. 

More information on what the three year training will cover is below, information on pay will be disclosed on request. The apprenticeship leads to a City and Guilds level 3 or higher. You must be between 16-24 to apply.

The apprenticeship scheme has been developed with the support of Defra and the Worshipful Company of Wax Chandlers.

So what will BFA apprentices study?

• introduction to beekeeping

• anatomy and dissection

• microscopy

• diseases

• integrated pest management

• pollen and nutrition

• botany and forage sources

• queen rearing and stock improvement

• seasonal management

• processing hive products

• bottling and presentation

• equipment cleansing and recovery

• carpentry including basic woodworking skills

• setting up a business

• finance

• business structures

• marketing

• the competitive environment

• the industry worldwide

• first aid

• health and safety

• food hygiene.

There will be 46 weeks practical work with the company both in the warehouse and with the bees. There may be opportunities to work on different bee farms throughout the country and visit different bee farming set-ups to gain a variety of experience. There may be some experience abroad as well. 

Give Sweet Treats and Candle Light

We're ready to give gifts. I know it still seems a bit early to talk Christmas but if you get the presents sorted early then you can sit by the fire and drink mulled wine and eat mince pies. We've already started on the stollen as the work tea break accompaniment of choice. 

If you'd prefer to put together your own gift box then we can take orders over the phone and can send out gift vouchers for our April beekeeping course, they go nicely as part of a box.

Leach & the London Honey Company

We have teamed up with Leach Pottery to produce these delightful beeswax candles, which have the Leach Pottery stamp on the base. Once finished, the pots can be used as egg cups - fantastic recycling and are a geat collectors item. The pots are hand thrown by Roelof Uys and the team at the pottery in St Ives. A bit of history: founded in 1920 by Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada, the Leach  Pottery is amongst the most respected and influential studio potteries in the world. He trained as a potter in Japan 1910-20, something which I feel can be sensed through their distinctive style of the pottery. Bernard Leach's pottery can be found in the collections of the Tate and the V&A, galleries which we have great affection for, such was his significance in 20th century art.

We are delighted to collaborate with the pottery which is still based in St Ives, Cornwall, as it has been over the last hundred years.

107% thank you x

Great excitement broke out at bee HQ today as the funding level for Steve and Alys' book tipped over from 99% to 100%! Alys swiftly turned up on her bike with a bottle of champagne and a little celebration ensued. We've ended the day on 107% funding which is amazing. 

You can still support the book and get in on the action at www.unbound.co.uk

Steve's South Korean debut

Look what we've received in the post! The South Korean translation of Steve's first book: The Urban Beekeeper - A Year of Bees in the City. Just thought we'd share it with you. We'd love to hear from any South Korean customers, what do you think of the translation?

Thank you!

Thank you to everyone who has supported the book so far:

Emma Leaf-Grimshaw  Adam Gill  Rebecca Falvey  Ciaran Walsh

Stephen Cooke Louise Curley Samuel Becker Jonathan Sheppard      Niamh McCabe Lawrence T 

Doyle      Jane Mackenzie     Fintan Ryan limeweed  Xander Cansell

Daniel Spokes     Fiona Reece    Rebecca Morton   Isobel Frankish  Dan Kieran

The Constant Gardener  Saira Horner  Shannon McConnell Linda Verstraten    A gift recipient

Tanya Weaver    Amanda Molden Guy Parker     Duncan Baird Jayne Robinson    Annabel Wardrop

Robert Masding Muna Reyal    Angela McCann Susan O'Donnell Alice Watanabe   Sally Kent

Thomas Godfrey Sara Watkin Clare Savage Catherine Daly Jennifer King Wayne Farrell

Phil Chandler Terence Marmot Lauren & Mark Giannullo Ian Larkin

Rob Amour Jan Fuscoe Marc Gellatly Scarlett Nunn Joanna Gradwell

Hedvig Murray Jackie Wales Steve Hartley Tony Gleeson Helena Dove

Elizabeth Woodhead Judith Dennison Viki Beaney Jos J.W. Mol

Bonnie James Jennifer Sebesta Lindy Neave Emma Probst

Aideen & Denis Jones AILEEN GERAGHTY David Burgess Rob Kolosky Emma Loisel

dan heaver john benbow tamar feast Nikki Vane ian callaghan Lisa Rodgers patricia michelson

Bill Fitzmaurice Nick Harbour Megan Ashfield Barbara Urbanic Penny Arrowood

Nick Bingham Birgit Kehrer Mandana Ruane Lynn Shouls Stephanie Wells Catherine Mason

Jennifer Ball Ruth Siwinski Davy Mitchell Robert Cooper

Julius Domoney Kathryn and Martin Palfrey Christoph Sander

Anna Egger Louise Cooke Lucy Hall Andrew Hearse Nikki Harris David Mottershead

 Karen McIlveen Jennifer McMullan Christine Herne Desiree Cuatt Jasmin Ford

Lorraine and Arthur Warman Carolyn Nisbet Maisie Poo Gareth Buchaillard-Davies

Elizabeth (Liz) Ware Elizabeth (Liz) Ware Adele Ray Wendy Johnson Beth Tilston

Sue Kaye Enid Robinson Susie King Sue Robinson Margarete Robinson Jeremy Paige

Jimmy Leach amanda carr Georgina Baker Simon Rankin

Simon Rankin Jane Perrone Juliet Rayment Lorraine Perry Neil Clowes

Joanne Haywood Judy Earl Bob Young Belinda Marks Alistair Parker Alistair Parker

Clive Stevenson daphne astor Chuck Whelon Julie Baker Alexandra Wood

Alexandra Wood Virginia Rankin A gift recipient Jonathan Fowler

Nancy Morris Martin Brown David Shaw Beth Harrison Nik Veselyevich Demented

William Hackett-Jones Karen Twible Rosamund Parnell John Annett Paul Geary

Torsie Webb Faith McCord George Chelton Dianne Lowry A gift recipient

Ian & Susan Lacey Mark O'Neill Mark McKellier Sarah Mather karen tanguy

Benny Declerck jeff willans L-J O'Neill Charlie Winton juliet roberts

Deborah Colella Amy Shelton Honeyscribe Wendy Pillar

Rebecca Doyle Lucy Holmes Sam Lomas Nick Moyle James Mann

Mark Ridsdill Smith Ming de Nasty Helen Parkins Thierry Gerber Meredith Andrew

Ian Grainger sue fielding Rachel Topps Sarah Coomer Matthew Caton

Kristin Bathurst Helen Kindness Laura Wall Alison Levey PHIL GATLEY Carl & Debs Legge

Juliet Shield al dean Elizabeth Fowler evilgordon Caitlin Harvey Agnes Ferwerda

Sui Kee Searle Andrea Burden Katherine Baldock Clive and Margaret Turner

Paul Debois Glenda Nielsen Monika Bulsiewicz Petra Hoyer Millar Rachel Gray

Kole Morgan lynn Keddie Sue Beesley Mark Jago Mike Perry Hannah Schlotter

Steven Scott Rennison Michelle Molloy Pamela Gatrell intoGardens James Alexander-Sinclair

Sierra McLeod Tony Dymond Jane Powers Lady Muck STEPHEN READ

Susan Lanfear Cally Smart James Clarkson Snow Erin Power Sam Newell

Steve Benbow Wendy Lord Simon Suter Meg Roper Claire Simpson

Emma Cooper Jon Knight John Mitchinson Maxine Davies Justin Pollard

Letters to a Beekeeper: your chance to get involved

Letters to a Beekeeper

By Alys Fowler and Steve Benbow

http://unbound.co.uk/books/letters-to-a-beekeeper

The Pitch

Neither of us fit our particular mould. I am a gardener, but I am quite the laziest, rule-breaking sort: if I can get away with letting nature get on with it so I can go dancing, then I do. I’ve given up digging, straight lines, lawns, weeds (I think of them more as compost ingredients), spraying and squishing. The thing I like about my garden most is eating it.

It’s true Steve is a commercial bee farmer, but his financial gains amount to a leaky roof, a tent so he can sleep next to his bees and the keys to many of London’s rooftops.

So yes, this is a book about gardening and it’s true that the honeybee crawls over every page, but this story is about more than beekeeping or how we fell in love with the bees’ sweet, sticky world.

It’s about the bigger picture, about all our forgotten insects, whether they are predator or prey, pollinator or pest. Of how they not only make our world run, but why you should care to take a closer look.

Over the seasons, our letters, emails, texts, recipes, notes and photos (Steve, in a former life was a travel photographer) explore each other’s world. We hope you’ll be swept along on our journey, with us helping out the pollinators and along the way picking up a wealth of advice, tips and ideas for growing food and keeping the pollinators well fed.

It’s about celebrating the great outdoors, even if that outdoors starts on a windowsill or rooftop.

It’s also a story about friendship and a passion for work that has meaning and respect for the world around it.

Why fund the book this way?

OK, so it’s not the obvious publishing route, we could have gone the traditional way, but it would have meant writing a book about garden craft, or a book about bees, but not midges, or a book about rules but as neither of us are particularly good at sticking to those, that didn’t seem like a good idea either. It all felt like a bit of a compromise and some ideas just don’t want to be boxed up like that. This is one of them.

We think it has wings and this seemed like the best way to see if that can happen. Why not let you, our community, decide? If you don’t like the idea, we’ll go back to garden craft and rule creating. But if you think otherwise, we’ll do everything we can to make it the best rule-breaking, wildlife, guerilla, urban gardening (with a little craft), insect-identifying, honey-tasting, wax-dripping, bee-keeping, recipe-including, beautifully photographed, epistolary how-to book you've ever seen. In short, we promise to try and make the world a sweeter, richer place to be.

Letters to a 

Beekeeper

ALYS FOWLER AND STEVE BENBOW

Dear Reader,

It is hard to imagine that a poppy flower just recently unfurled with its delicate wrinkled petals swaying in the sun is not there to please us, nor that a rose so heady in scent has not opened just to entice us, but someone much, much smaller.

Any flower that takes your breath away with beauty and complexity has done so to entice an insect, not you to take a closer look. The floral structures, those pretty petals in pleasing colours, the lures of sweet scent, are an evolutionary response to attract a pollinator to cross-fertilise and set seed.

Plants have evolved to lure and attract anyone and everyone who could do this job for them, so some flowers choose hummingbirds, a few choose rats or mice but most have done a deal with insects, preferably flying ones, who can take pollen from one plant and deposit it on another miles away if necessary.

To lure in these pollinators they have created ever more complex and extraordinary floral architecture: flowers with flags, triggers and tubes to attract specific pollinators, with lures such as heady perfume (some males bees use this to create their own unique aftershave) or certain enticing colours and patterns. And finally, to keep the pollinator coming back again and again, a reward: delicate nectars rich in complex sugars or protein-fuelled pollen.

A wildflower meadow is no longer a pretty picture but a market full of stallholders shouting their wares, ‘come here, try this’. The pollinator drops in, drinks up the nectar, steals some pollen and then is off onto the next stall. The plant has done its job satisfactorily only if the pollinator visits another of its kin and directly transfers the pollen. If this happens then the plant has out-crossed increasing its genetic pool and ensuring its future.

Or put another way, only if another party is involved can they get it on. Otherwise they are left self-pollinating, which has its place, but sure isn’t as much fun as sharing.

As plants are by their very nature rooted to the ground, if they want to ensure long-term survival, they need to grow in more than one place. If you can’t run away when a boulder falls on your home or a river runs away with your soil, or someone eats you to death, your gene pool is rather limited. If however you have folk around the bend, then all is not lost. Thanks to pollinators, the wind and animals dispersing seed, plants can conquer new ground, which in turn safeguards thehair offspring.

There are 250,000 species of flowering plants in the world and 80 percent of them need insects to survive. This relationship is known as mutualism, a 'you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours' kind of affair—all parties derive a benefit from the association. The plant gets its pollen transferred and in return the pollinator gets a reward, be it more pollen, sweet nectar, a heady scent to attract mates or a bed for the night between the petals.

We also need these relationships to survive. One in every three mouthfuls of food we eat happens because of pollinators. But like all relationships it is more complex that that. The renowned entomologist Edward O Wilson predicted we have roughly a month before we’d become extinct without insects. The truth is our world is inextricably bound to the rest. Lose our pollinators and we lose our world.

We have seen unprecedented losses in biodiversity over the last 100 years; you cannot open a paper and not read of this loss, somewhere. Often they are so rare, so far flung, that is hard to decide how we feel about losing a goose barnacle or flightless parrot from New Zealand and because of this, we do little to change our habits. Gardening, however, is a friendly solution, the simple act of going out of your back door and enjoying your slice of nature can be wholly positive on everyone involved.

Our gardens have become an important refuge for wildlife torn from their natural habitats. The patchwork quilt of back gardens, courtyards, forgotten park corners, allotments, balconies and even window boxes create a corridor for wildlife to pass though, dine upon and rest in as needed. This is the reason I garden, because it is home, for me and for others.

Last August I met a beekeeper. Now I like honey and I like the bees to keep me in seeds, but mostly up to this point, pollinators were just another part of my ecosystem. One I liked, but no more than worms or beetles.

But this beekeeper was quite sure that I needed to become hooked and much like a pretty flower with its showy floral parts and complex lures he made sure I couldn’t quite miss his offer.

His lure came in a deli takeaway tray, wrapped in a fine film of tissue paper. I had hourly updates about the contents as British airways tried and failed to swipe them away. Steve when it comes to honey, can charm anyone and so at the Edinburgh Book Festival, just before we were both to go and talk about nature in cities, he dropped a glistening chunk of honeycomb in my hands, harvested from the downlands of Salisbury Plains. The chalk soils on which I had grown up on—a lure and reward in one. If his passionate plea for the honeybee at our talk woke me up, his honey made me hungry.

I began to count bees in my garden, I started to note the different bumbles, I sat and listened to their different hums and buzz, the high notes of the bumbles compared to the low drone of the honeybees. I watched their flight paths, the speed at which they alighted and landed amongst my flowers. I pulled out an old copy identification guide started to learn the names of my different visitors, I became intrigued by wasps and even learnt to love midges (they pollinate 3% of the world flowers, mostly by accident). I no longer looked at the insects in my garden as either predators or prey or merely pollinators, but as players in an ecosystem and it became clear the more I tumbled into this world that they all need help and they need it now.

The decline in our insect world is drastic and dire, the consequences are terrifying but we can make a change and possibly the best place to start this is in our gardens.

Alys

HI,

My name is Steve Benbow, the beekeeper; I’m the son of a mechanic. I come from a small village in Shropshire, near the Welsh Border and just adore being outdoors.

I don’t own a house, haven’t a pension plan, nor exist on a voting register. The treasures I do have are somewhat different to others. I tend my gentle bees on London rooftops. Whilst others scurry around below, I catch glimpses of migrating birds that pass high through the capital. My days are governed by the seasons, our somewhat bizarre weather systems and my devotion to our gloriously hairy British honeybees Without this love affair, my life would be very different. Without these enriching qualities, I know now I could not stand city living and this was why I decided to bring a small amount of the countryside with me when I arrived in the Capital twenty-four years ago.

Today the majority of the world lives like me, in cities. And this is changing our countryside. Habitats are battled over and lost and for all our critters, not just our honeybees, this is a travesty. I travel with my bees all over this country and what I see is more intensive farming, more new housing and more tarmac. I see more people and less pollinators. These hidden heroes of our food system need a better deal.

We need to protect and preserve what we already have, to consider gentler methods of management, not to mow our municipal spaces more heavily or spray verges and roadsides. We need to starting a natural revolution within our cities and spread it out to our wider world. And I need help to do this.

It’s true, I once won best in show at Bermondsey Hall for my allotment onions but my gardening and planting knowledge is, at best, limited. I needed a gardener. And as luck would have it, I found one, leaning against the granite stone of the Freemasons Hall in Edinburgh last September.

She wore a battered old tweed jacket that had flecks of auburn, which matched her wild tumbling locks. But it was her fingers I remembered most about our first encounter, not what we ate for lunch, a preamble to our pairing at the literary festival. Mud (or was it peat free compost?) was under her nails. I found it instantly appealing – here was someone like me at the pit face not desk bound.

All I had to do now was get her hooked on honey and tell her my plan . . ..

Steve

The beekeeper won, I was hooked. He needed my flowers and I needed his bees. Thus, we have set about a plan to write this book. A book about how you can help the bees, the butterflies, the rove beetles, the rat’s tailed maggots (I bet you didn’t think you need them) and all the other marvellous, sometimes revolting, often hilarious insects that make up our world.

Into the Wilderness

We had a fab time at Wilderness Festival earlier this month, we were invited by the lovely Vintage Books Story telling tent who hosted all kinds of activities for the younger festival goers including hedgerow walks and our own bee mask painting and seed bom making workshops.

Pictured above are our budding guerrilla gardeners making their wildflower seed boms. These sessions were originally targeted at the juniors but we couldn't keep the adults away including a couple wanting to learn how to make seed boms to give away at their wedding.

We were impressed by the bee identification capabilities of even the younger kids we met at the festival. The picture at the top shows our bee I.D table with our naturally deceased specimens lined up, complete with bee identification cards courtesy of the helpful Friends of the Earth who were doing a sterling job near the busking stage.

When we weren't talking pollinators we made the most of the opportunity to take a dip in the swimming lake, listen to Sugarman and Empire of the Sun and eat too many churros and chocolate.

Fighting forward!

 

We've been meaning to write for a while but this is not the time of year for sitting, this is the beekeeping season proper. It was slow to start with a cold wet spring but, touch wood, warmer weather has arrived and hopefully it will stay. As I write, Steve is on the South Coast, Kent, tending to the bees, it was an early start; he's on his way back and it's only 10.41 am. He says the dogrose is out and the woodsage is budding up and there is some honey in the hives!

Whilst we are busy in our own microcosm of work there are bigger plots afoot. Happily, the EU has put at least a temporary ban on neonicotinoids, a group of pesticides which have been linked to poor bee health. But this is only for two years. It seems the March of the Beekeepers' which Steve joined on the 26th of April helped. But bees minister Lord de Mauley is attending the British Bee Summit on Friday and we need to pressure him into pushing for more ambitious plans to improve the situation for all of Britain's bees, not just the honeybees that bring in the sweet stuff. Friends of the Earth are doing a good job of keeping the pressure up, if you want to lend your voice you can do so on their website: http://www.foe.co.uk/news/petition_bees_minister_40566.html

But I don't want to end on a gloomy note. There is lots of positive work being done. Steve had a great time at Chelsea Flower show this year where there was such encouraging interest in bees and the gardens reflected a sympathy to pollinators which is becoming more deeply embedded. Hopefully as a nation we can spread this to our farming practices by reducing chemical use and using Integrated Pest Management approaches which take into consideration planting times, natural predators and a variety of variations on inter-planting different plants to keep the pests in check. Fellow Spa Terminus businesses, where we are based, like Jane at Fern Verrow http://fernverrow.com/ are busy farming in a sustainable way. I had a very inspiring visit to Wakelyns (wakelyns.co.uk/), the Organic Research Centre's farm recently and they have managed to get 7 species of bumble bee taking up residence so they must be doing something right! So let's try for more of this and less chemical warfare and more happy beekeeping! Some sunshine would also help!

Read all about it!

Whilst we don't like to brag we're feeling pretty chuffed with the lovely photos of Honey HQ in the Observer Food Monthly this weekend. We're flattered to be featured in their 50 top foodie picks for bittersweet Dorset Bell Heather. We're also seriously considering making Alexander McQueen company garb after Wallpaper's stylish shoot of Sarah Burton's S/S 2013 collection amongst our hives.  The question is can we put McQueen on the tax return? 

C: Manuel Vazquez

C: Manuel Vazquez

Check out the other 49 foodie picks, which include some other Spa Terminus residents: 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/mar/17/50-top-foodie-picks-observer-food-monthly

The Awakening Month!

The Awakening Month!

March is not showing any signs of warming up and neither is London Honey HQ, so we're pulling ourselves through with dreams of wild flower meadows. We're partial to a bit of guerilla gardening so we thought we'd have a bash at making our own seed bombs. Now I've mentioned the b word we'll probably get picked up by the secret services - but it's bee friendly flower power we want to spread not war! The seed bomb seems to capture the imagination more than a pack of seeds and being encased in a nourishing blend of clay and peat free compost we feel the meadow seeds have a better chance of getting going in a bomb. You can either hurl your seed bomb towards it's desired growing spot for the full feeling of being a botanical revolutionary, it'll break up on impact, or crumble it up and pat it down slightly onto the soil.

The seed mix contains over twenty types of flowers so I'm excited to see which seeds come up in my patch. To name just a few there's Wild Carrot, Meadow Buttercup, Bladder Campion, Sorrel and Cowslip. With such variety there are flowers good not only for honey bees but for the bumble bees & solitary bees. It's partly about tongue length you see, if the bee's tongue (actually called a probosis) is too short for the particular flower it can't reach the nectar - bit like trying to reach that last bit of ice-cream in a narrow sundae glass if the spoon's not long enough. Plus the flowers will be staggered across spring and summer to provide for bees for longer.

If you want a guide to gardening for the little ladies then we are enjoying "Plants for Bees" by Kirk and Howes. It covers honey bees, bumble bees and solitary bees and includes edible plants and trees. The positive thing about Spring being slow to kick off is there is time to catch up on gardening plans! Our homemade bee bombs are currently only available direct from us on a Saturday at Spa Terminus.

toodle pip

Light at the end of February

February is always a tease. You think you’re through the worst of winter, you can

almost smell spring, maybe the odd daffodil, but it’s not quite there yet. I might want it to be spring already but if it warms up too early the ladies start flying and use up precious energy and stores.

There is definitely a primal need for light and warmth for us all though!! There’s too little sun at this time of year but beeswax candles bring a glow into my life with their warming honey kissed flames. It’s easy to forget how important wax used to be as a form of light before electricity but it was quite an industry in itself. 

You might not know that bees gather a whacking 6lb of honey to produce 1lb of wax; it is secreted from glands under their abdomen. Precious stuff. We melt down all the waxy scraps left from cutting honeycomb and old comb that we’ve extracted across the year. 

We attended an event at the Wax Chandlers hall a couple of weeks ago; it was a really positive meeting with the Bee Farmers Association looking at commercial beekeeping apprenticeships. Watch this space! The surge in interest in beekeeping has been great but according to the Rowse employee at the event a staggering 90% of the honey bought in the UK is still not produced here! We can only hope that if we have a good summer the bees can get out of their hives and we can have a go at that figure.

The Wax Chandlers have been involved in the candle trade for hundreds of years and according to their website beeswax traders used to be known as cirgers, from the French word for a type of candle – cierge. Anyway, this is my extended lead in to telling you that we’re going to bring the wax and honey trade into the 21^st Century by launching our own online shop for all things London Honey Company!! So you can now get your honey and candles by post! Check out our new little online shop...