An article of this length cannot provide you with a ‘crash course’ on beekeeping. (There are many beekeeping societies and individuals who can give excellent instruction and there are numerous books to offer advice too.) What I can do is give you a flavour of the joys of beekeeping and then it’s up to you! What I will also try to do is to give you an idea of the sort of plants that will keep bees happy, so that even if you are not able to keep bees yourself, you can still help them in a very practical way.

I am what you might call a fledgling beekeeper, having been introduced to my buzzy friends only a couple of years ago by my mentor, and now business partner, Craig Hughes. But I have fallen in love with the honey bee. Describing it thus may sound twee or overly romantic, but believe me, the sort of relationship you have with your bees is a little like being in love. You must love your bees unconditionally. You have to nurture them, be tender towards them, and be patient, and the rewards will be unbounded to the point that you feel your heart will burst. But it's not all plain sailing. At times you may feel let down, petulant, and exasperated to the point of getting annoyed - don't! The bees will sense it and give you a metaphorical slap across the face!

Honey bees spend most of the winter tucked up in the hive, protecting the queen and keeping her warm. One or two ‘scout’ bees will venture out if the temperature rises to have a reconnoitre but generally speaking the bee season will start in March and will continue through until October. This essentially corresponds with the growing season of plants which isn’t merely a coincidence - nature designed it that way! There is a huge sense of anticipation when you open the hive for the first time in Spring. Have the bees survived? Despite all your best efforts some colonies do die and it is heartbreaking to witness it. However, more survive than don’t, and so now is the time to check that the colony is healthy and free from disease and pests so that the queen can start building up the colony ready to gather in all that lovely pollen and nectar. There are three types of bee in a colony: the queen (of which there is only one) who lays eggs; drones (roughly a hundred in an ‘average’ colony during the summer) who are male and laze around all day; and the thousands of sterile, female workers who do all the housekeeping, tend the babies, and go out collecting all the pollen and nectar.

Maureen inspecting a hive

It is these raw materials that are miraculously turned into honey. Millennia ago, humans found honey to be delicious and have been farming bees - and getting stung - ever since.

Bees will not sting indiscriminately - it is their final defence. Bees will defend their queen, the colony, and themselves to the death - literally, because once a honey bee stings you it will die. So every time you open the hive to inspect the colony or to gather honey, the bees think you are attacking them and their natural instinct is to defend themselves. It is always advisable, therefore, to wear protective clothing. I always wear a full bee suit which despite their best efforts, the bees have yet to penetrate. When togged up in my suit I have been mistaken for a pest-controller before now – my reply is that I am a bee-controller, which to a degree I am. As a bee keeper you are trying to manipulate the bees, persuading them to make as much honey as possible without compromising the welfare of the colony. After all, bees don’t make honey for the benefit of humans. Honey is bee food. So when, in the autumn, you gather the final frames of honey you must leave some for the bees and also provide them with replacement food, in the form of sugar syrup or specially formulated bee food, so that they will survive the winter.

Close up of a section of the hive.

Keeping bees is not hard work. On average you will spend about an hour a week during the ‘bee season’ looking after your bees, checking that the queen is laying and that there are no deformed cells; making sure the hive is disease-free; providing enough frames for the workers to build up honey stocks. In the winter months there is very little to do as far as the bees are concerned. In fact, once the bees are snuggled down for the winter you should avoid opening the hive because a sudden blast of cold air infiltrating the carefully regulated warmth of the hive can kill the entire colony.

You should, therefore, have some free time to do a little gardening. So many beekeepers seem to be gardeners - and vice versa. Bees need flowers to survive but not all flowers provide suitable food for bees. A beautiful, red, Hybrid Tea Rose, for example, a quintessential flower of the British garden, is as useful to a honey bee as a pine forest is to a cow. A patch of flowering Marjoram (Origanum vulgare), however, will have bees stacking like little aeroplanes just waiting to land and feed. Actually many herbs are ideal ‘bee plants’ (Debs has listed some elsewhere on the web site). There are a number of reasons for this.

Firstly, the nature of the plant itself. The nearer the cultivated plant is to its wild, ‘natural' original - as many herbs are - the better it is for bees. It is true that not all flowers are pollinated by bees (some are pollinated by other insects, some are wind pollinated, some reproduce vegetatively), but if we consider that the main purpose of just about every living thing on our planet is to reproduce then anything whose reproductive organs have been interfered with will be unable to procreate.

This is especially true of plants that rely on bees for pollination. Highly bred or hybridized plants often have double flowers which render them sterile. The ‘extra' petals of a double flower are in fact a genetic mutation of the sexual structures of the flower which means that there are no pollen-bearing male stamens and often no nectaries. If a bee or other insect does land on a double flower to look for nectar or pollen it will have had a wasted journey and will have unnecessarily used energy as well. Double flowers look good from a human perspective but they are of no value to bees.

Pot Marigold & Lavender, Good for Bees

Secondly, the shape and form of flowers is also a good indicator as to whether bees will like them. Spiky stems with lots of smaller flowers, like Lavender (Lavandula sp), or Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) are good bee plants; the bee can visit scores of individual flowers on one stem, using very little energy and pollinating numerous flowers at the same time. Single, ‘flat’ flowers, like any of the daisy family - Echinacea (Echinacea purpurea) or Pot Marigold (Calendula officinalis) for example - where the pollen and nectar is easy to access are ideal, and there is a ‘landing platform’ to boot. Bell-shaped flowers, too, such as Foxglove (Digitalis sp.), will provide a useful source of food, although some are better suited to bumble bees rather than honey bees.

A dandelion flower as we see it.

Approximation of how the bee sees the dandelion.

Thirdly, bees see differently from us. Humans can see all the colours of the rainbow from red through to violet. Bees’ vision is slightly different in that they see less than us at one end of the colour spectrum but more than us at the other. They cannot see red, but they do see ultraviolet light, which we cannot. As you can imagine, this has a direct influence on which flowers bees are attracted to. They will automatically target flowers which stand out to them (especially yellow and white ones which reflect ultraviolet light). So that beautiful red rose we mentioned earlier is all but invisible to the bee. That does not mean, however, that all red flowers are not appealing to bees. Think of the Field Poppy (Papaver rhoeas) - probably one of the most vivid reds in the flower world. Look carefully at the centre of the flower, where the ‘business area’ is located and we see that there are dark blotches. This is the bit that the bee sees and in fact the pollen of the field poppy is dark blue. I am certainly not a herb expert but I have noticed that there seem to be very few herbs with flowers at the red end of the colour spectrum and I can’t help but think this is a deliberate ploy by Mother Nature to make pollination by insects, and bees in particular, as easy as possible.

So if you grow herbs it seems to me that you are an ideal candidate to keep bees! If you feel inspired, go on a bee-keeping taster day or, if keeping bees is not an option for you, grow even more herbs or even sponsor a hive.

About The Author - Maureen Little heads up Crossmoor Farm Preserves, a branch of Crossmoor Honey Farm, which produces seasonal preserves using, whenever possible, locally sourced ingredients. Maureen is also a keen gardener having learned nearly all her horticultural skills from her father who owned a successful market garden in Sussex. She is particularly interested in herbs and flowers which benefit bees.
Maureen has lectured at University, practiced garden design, and, more recently, ran a shop selling local, seasonal vegetables, fruit and her own preserves and herbs. It was during the latter venture that she met Craig, bee-keeper extraordinaire, who introduced her to bees and wonderful Lancashire honey. Maureen is also a seasoned speaker and is very happy to talk to community and school groups on a variety of bee-related topics. For further information contact Maureen.