Britain has around 270 kinds of Bee — and only one of them makes honey. Here's who they are, how honey is really made and harvested, and how a single patch of long grass can fill your Summer with them.
We picture stripes and honey — but the honey Bee is just one species out of roughly 270 in Britain. Most of our Bees make no honey at all, and they're some of the hardest-working pollinators we have.
The famous one, Apis mellifera. It lives in colonies of tens of thousands and stores honey to survive winter — the only Bee we keep in hives, and the only one whose honey we harvest.
Big, round and furry, in small colonies. They keep only a tiny few days' store of a honey-like food — never a surplus to harvest. Brilliant in cool weather, which is why they're out first on a chilly morning.
Mason, leafcutter and mining Bees — most of Britain's Bees. Each female nests alone, makes no honey, and quietly does a huge share of the pollinating. These are the ones your long grass feeds.
Want to know every one of them? The real experts have you covered — the Bumblebee Conservation Trust and the Wildlife Trusts' Bee guides.
Honey is simpler than it sounds: it's nectar that honey Bees have gathered, changed with a little of their own chemistry, and dried down until it keeps. Here's the whole journey.
A worker visits flower after flower, drawing up nectar into a special "honey stomach" — kept separate from the one she actually eats with.
Back at the hive she passes the nectar mouth-to-mouth to house Bees. Their enzymes — chiefly one called invertase — break the nectar's sugars into glucose and fructose.
The Bees lay it into six-sided cells of wax they build themselves — the honeycomb, a near-perfect little store.
Fresh nectar is about 70% water. The Bees fan their wings over the comb to evaporate it down to roughly 18% — thick enough to keep for months.
Once it's ripe, they cap each cell with a lid of fresh wax, storing it away for the winter — or for us.
A Beekeeper only ever takes the surplus — the honey the colony can spare. It's a gentle, unhurried job, and nothing is added along the way.
A smoker keeps the Bees calm while the frames of capped honey are lifted out and the Bees gently brushed off.
The thin wax lids are scraped or forked off both sides of the comb to open the cells.
The frames go into an extractor and are spun; the force flings the honey out to run down the sides.
It's strained to remove bits of wax and pollen, then poured straight into jars.
Honest note: I don't keep hives — I just leave the lawn long for the wild ones. If you'd like to keep Bees properly, the British Beekeepers Association is where to start.
I cut a single strip to the bird feeders and left everything either side to grow. Within days it filled with clover and little yellow flowers — and the pollinators found it. A small back garden in the North East, now humming all Summer.
You don't need a hive, or even a meadow. A single patch of long grass and clover is enough to feed the wild Bees on your street all Summer.
Mow a route to a shed, a bench or the feeders. The path says "this is deliberate" — the rest can grow.
Give it two or three weeks. Clover and wild flowers that were always in the soil start to show — and the Bees arrive within hours of the first flowers.
One cut in late Summer, after the flowers have set seed. Take the cuttings off so the soil stays lean and flowery.
You don't need to buy a thing — the lawn does most of it. But if you'd like to help the Bees along, these are the honest few that earn their place.
A native UK meadow mix for any bare patches — clover, knapweed, ox-eye daisy. Feeds Bees all Summer.
See on Amazon →Somewhere for mason and leafcutter Bees to nest — the gentle, sting-free pollinators that do most of the quiet work.
See on Amazon →Bees get thirsty in Summer. A shallow dish with pebbles to land on gives them somewhere safe to drink.
See on Amazon →Buying local raw honey supports the Beekeepers who look after our honey Bees. Seek out a jar from near you.
See on Amazon →For that one late cut, and the tidy edges of the mown path. Buy once, sharpen, keep for years.
See on Amazon →As an Amazon Associate, The Bee Whisperer may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases — at no extra cost to you. We only ever point to things that genuinely fit.
Simple, honest Bee and garden T-shirts — printed and posted in the UK, no stock, no waste.
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