2016 SMALL ARTISAN PRODUCER OF THE YEAR
The image of country beekeeping is sedate, dreamy, redolent of a bygone age. Take, for example, the Soho Farmhouse apiary which I designed, installed and currently maintain. Nested up on a south-facing Cotswold hillside, it sits on top of the Farmhouse’s gorgeous production garden – an array of 10 WBC hives, knee-deep in wildflowers. Continue reading “Trials, Tribulations and Triumphs”
A honeybee sting is best avoided: the bee dies and you get a small dose of poison. It’s a lose-lose situation for both participants. So why do bees bother stinging at all ? Continue reading “The Sting”
It’s that time of year. The swarming season. It starts when the first dandelion bursts into flower and lasts until the summer solstice is over, just over a month from now. So why do bees swarm ?
Beekeeping is a hands-on job: all of the senses are engaged when working with bees: touch, smell, hearing, vision and finally, most delightfully, taste. It is a truly immersive craft.
It’s that time of year again. Rasping throats, bunged-up noses and streaming eyes: the hay fever season has arrived. And Silver Birch is its harbinger.
Lee Westcott’s a rising star of the London restaurant scene, with his uber-cool Typing Room in Bethnal Green Town Hall setting a high standard of finesse and pure enjoyment of food and flavours. Continue reading “Too Many Chefs?”
If we hadn’t been due to deliver 15 kilos of local London Honey to Joe Fox, chef at the legendary Petersham Nurseries, on a sparkling Spring morning, we’d probably have gone anyway.
We love the versatility of honey in the kitchen. As a marinade, a rub, a glaze, a botanical, a healthy sugar substitute, a drizzle, a grace note in a vinaigrette, a dot of flavour, or just on toast, honey is unrivalled. In our book, honey deserves to sit alongside salt and pepper as a seasoning. But that night it was all about baking. With Bee’s Brilliant Biscuits.
It seems a bit mimsy to be posting about the planting of a single bronze fennel root in our Leathermarket Gardens edible planting border. The point is that it’s incremental.
Despite the hirsute and rough-hewn appearance of many motor-bikers, they have a legendary attachment to the motorcycles which they ride. So it is with beekeepers (the “hirsute and rough-hewn” description only applies to the males of the species, obviously) and the deep affection which they have for their bees.
Continue reading “Zen & The Art Of Apis Mellifera Maintenance”