Life without bees would not only be sad and silent, it would also be less delicious and nutritionally diverse. Bees are one of the strongest threads in nature’s web and a vital link that keeps our food systems running. They help provide that wonderful, energy-boosting honey but more importantly, nearly three quarters of the crops that produce fruit and seeds for human consumption, depend on bees for pollination.
How can chefs do their bit for bees?
Plant bee-friendly fauna
A bee-friendly garden is the first step toward bee success. It’s great fun to simply try and spot, count and identify the different bees that visit. Plant lots of bee-friendly plants. Herbs are a great example – bees absolutely love herbs. They are the original herbalists. Just like with humans, the medicinal qualities of herbs are greatly beneficial to bees. Flowers can lift the visual appearance of venues, but they can also provide food and habitat for pollinators. The bumble bee will often sleep within the petals of flowers.
Wild hives
Creating your own wild hive or bee hotel is a great way of supporting wild bees. Hollowed out trees or tree boxes can encourage wild colonies of bees that don’t have to be managed, to stick around and work their magic.
Hive shares
If you have the space but lack the time or experience, research and reach out to local beekeepers and producers. Contra deals can be struck where you can provide the land and bee food in return for some of the honey. It may be that you could link up with other spaces and stakeholders in the community to set up local initiatives.
Creating your own hive
If you’re desperate to have your own bees and have the habitat for them, hives like to be south facing with the entrance facing the rising sun. Bee-friendly access to water is also crucial. Site the hive away from busy roads, make sure it’s sheltered and provide diverse plant life for them to feed on. Contact your local beekeeping society too. It’s a great way to learn the ropes, gain support and get some experience. Beekeeping is very accessible. The book provides lots of details on where you can buy new national standard hives but there is plenty of kit that can be found second hand so make connections.
Looking after a hive
The volume of honey produced by a national standard hive can vary depending on the bees, the habitat and their food sources but you can get up to 14kg surplus honey so around 40 x 350g jars. There is work to be done to ensure the colony is healthy though. In the warmer months as the bees start to forage, a national standard hive will need to be inspected every 7-10 days. This helps to manage the swarming between April and July. Swarming is naturally occurring and healthy for the hive. The bees either want to expand the colony or ditch the queen. If you are inspecting regularly, you can be prepared and take certain steps when it begins to swarm. As it gets cooler, you want to make sure the hive is healthy and they have plenty of food. You can do something called hefting which is where you lift the hive to gauge the weight of the honey stores.
The benefits to a chef’s creativity
As a catering business or kitchen, bees can be business boosting and it doesn’t get any better than creating your own supply of honey that can be used in recipes or sold. Depending on the bees’ food – the texture, the colour, the smell and the taste of the honey can all be so different. For this reason, honey can beautifully and uniquely showcase provenance, seasonality and locality. It’s a product of terroir and the honey will look, smell and taste of the plants and fauna the bees have been feeding on. Different flowers can provide different flavour notes to the final honey.
I think it’s exciting for chefs to be able to experiment with their own honey alchemy. You can plant specific bee food to provide certain nuances to the final honey. You can even take frames from the hive at different times of year to other local areas where there is
a proliferation of a certain crop. In Devon, they have hives in an orchard that are surrounded by wildflower meadows. The bees love the dandelions so at certain times of the year you will get beautiful bright yellow, dandelion flavoured honey. Next, frames may be taken to a buckwheat field and the honey produced will be darker with caramel notes.
There are other products that come from the hives as well. As part of a dinner I created with some friends who worked at Noma, we infused a mayonnaise with propolis – a resin that the bees bring in to make the hive. It’s high in antioxidants and has an amazing flavour. We also used the wax to age a cultured butter for 2 years. I have also aged fruit in bees wax, which is a fascinating technique to try. The wax is anti-microbial so provides the perfect house for fermentation. Bee pollen as well is another of those cool health ingredients.
Can anyone keep bees?
Yes and no. Anyone can start a hive, but it has to be sited in the correct area if the colony is to be healthy. I help with the beekeeping at River Cottage but can’t keep bees where I live as my garden is north facing and I live on a busy road. I do have a flat roof, but it gets too much wind so if I was to put a hive up there, it wouldn’t be great for the bees.
With the numbers of beekeepers on the rise since Colony Collapse Disorder was first reported in 2006, it is worthwhile finding out how many other hives are in your area first. A high concentration of bees in a certain area can put pressure on the bees and other populations. At River Cottage, we have moved away from the traditional way of beekeeping and are instead trying to create habitats to secure the future of wild bees. It means a more natural home for bees and less work for us.
