Bees are one of the world’s most marvellous creatures; velvet beauties no larger than a marble, powdered with pollen. They hum and dip across your garden or chart a high meander through an orchard of apple trees, darting from flower to flower, poking their heads into petals to find nectar and pollen. In return, the bees help the flowers by spreading their pollen. This is called pollination. Many plants would not be able to fertilise without bees and other pollinators, so this relationship is symbiotic as both bee and flower help each other to reproduce and succeed. In fact, one-third of the food we eat depends on pollinators, so their work is incredibly important for humans too. 

A little about the bees, ‘our girls’. They are British Buckfast bees and (yes, we are biased) they are very well behaved, polite and prolific. They forage on the abundant natural larder on our doorstep but can fly up to three miles for particularly tasty treats. Typically, our natural forest larder includes foxgloves, borage, knapweed, clover, cornflowers, poppy’s, honeysuckle, brambles, horse chestnut tree pollen and acres of buttercups. They particularly enjoy our recently planted fruit orchard.