7. The native honey bee here in Britain is much darker than the bees most of us would recognise; often referred to as the dark European honey bee as it’s originally native to most of the north of Europe and doesn’t feature the yellow bands of other honey bees. A largely forgotten subspecies of the honey bee, it’s now quite rare, but perfectly adapted to our climate.
8. Inside a beehive, there is 1 queen and her sole job is to ensure the survival of the colony by laying sufficient eggs for the continual reproduction of the colony. The queen also produces chemicals that guide the behaviour of the other bees and in the height of summer, she can lay as many as 2,500 eggs in a single day.
9. If the queen bee dies, workers will create a new queen by selecting a young larva (the newly hatched baby insects) and feeding it a special food called “royal jelly“. This enables the larva to develop into a fertile queen.
10. Honey is an entirely natural product and its taste is a signature of the landscape from which the bees foraged. The result is honey that tastes different from wherever you buy it. Some of the honeybees’ favourite plants include borage, crocus, salix, marjoram, helenium and phacelia to name just a few.