Bees make honey
13th February 2024
But there’s lots of kinds of bees that aren’t honey bees and Harry and Lorraine from Harry’s Bees told us all about them. There are more than 20,000 species of bees in the world and, unlike the iconic ‘social’ honeybee, most bees do not live in hives. The majority are solitary bees, but all are important plant pollinators, a fact that is important to landscape architects keen to increase biodiversity in their designs. So the talk by Lorraine took us through many incredible facts about bees, their lives, their habits, how they collect nectar and pollen including how they see flowers (in the ultra-violet). A ‘live’ frame of bees was also present for us to observe at close quarters, so it was amazing to see the thousands of females going about their business, all children of the queen. Harry provided some honey to taste at the end of the talk. Two types: thicker and crystallised (‘early’) and more runnier honey (later, summer). Both delicious. A tasty and informative meeting of the Botanical Society.
Harry’s Honey is local to Cheltenham (Cleeve Hill) and further information is at www.harryshoney.co.uk
