- Since 2014 -

Ben's Berkshire Bees

Award Winning West Berkshire Honey

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ABOUT OUR BEES

Our Story

West Berkshire Beekeeping

We are a small beekeeping business based in West Berkshire, producing high-quality honey and wax products from our own hives. We are members of the British Beefarmers' Association.

Our apiaries are located throughout West Berkshire, and at the height of summer, we have over 10 million bees buzzing over Newbury and Thatcham. These industrious pollinators work tirelessly, pollinating approximately 200 billion flowers and contributing to the health of our local environment.

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Fallen Tree – Honey Bee Rescue!

Last weekend, we were called to rescue a colony of honey bees whose nest was in a tree that had fallen during high winds.

Wild honey bee colonies love to nest in the hollow spaces of trees. As trees age, the inside often begins to rot, creating perfect cavities for bees to build their home. These natural hollows are well-insulated, with small entrances that protect the bees from predators and the weather. Bees line these cavities with propolis—a resin-based material they gather from tree sap—to waterproof the interior before constructing their combs.

Unfortunately, honeycomb, while incredibly strong, is not built to withstand a 10-meter fall. When the tree toppled, it cracked, exposing a significant amount of comb. The damage was extensive, and while most of the colony was lost, a small cluster of bees remained alive. Sadly, I didn’t see the queen, who is often injured or killed in such situations as the comb breaks apart.

To save the remaining bees, I carefully cut the comb to fit the size of standard hive frames, securing it with elastic bands. The bees were then gently shaken into the hive box, where they quickly settled onto the salvaged comb. Thankfully, there was still plenty of honey stored in the comb, which will help sustain them.

While I’m unsure if this colony will be strong enough to survive the rest of the winter, we’re doing everything we can to give them a fighting chance. Fingers crossed!

Review of 2024 and a look to the future for Ben's Berkshire Bees.

New Year is always a good time to look back and reflect on the year and to plan things to come.

🍯 We have sold more honey than ever before. Our super local differentiator of village by village labeling seems to be working well. After some teething issues postal orders from the website seem also to be going smoothly. We have started to supply restaurants including @goatontheroof . We have been regular attendees at the Newbury Farmers Market.

🍯Early in the year we invested in the Bee Mobile after getting stuck in one to many fields. This has made inspecting the bees much quicker throughout the season.

🍯The company received a grant @westberkshirecouncil to improve our honey extraction equipment, which has greatly improved the speed at which we can process honey.

🍯I became an assessor for the BBKA Basic assessment and continued to win prizes at the Berkshire Honey Show and at the National Honey Show.

🍯I have given talks to the Young Farmers, Women's Institutes, pre-schools at Shaw House and as part of the Thatcham Festival.

🍯In terms of our other projects: SIPA Honey Bees - our queen rearing branch had a reasonable year, although the intensity of queen rearing continues to be a step learning curve. The Small Scale Commercial Beekeeping Network we set up has grown into a fantastic community with over 500 members.

In 2025 we are looking to develop further.

🍯Increasing our number outlets - we are considering a regular attendance at the Thatcham Market on Fridays.

🍯We are going to start doing beekeeping experience sessions to help supplement the income the business. A limited number are now available on the website.

🍯We're starting a project with the Padworth recycling center to put hives into conservation land there.

🍯Launching beekeeping training via @thehoneybeeacademyuk - a project we set up a little while ago.

After our pause for Chirstmas our online shop is now open again. Honey can be collected from Thatcham or dispatched via the Royal Mail. Happy New Year everyone!

Sunday 15th December is our last day for orders for delivery or collection via our website. We have added some of the products we have had on our market stall to the website. We will take all the stock we have left after tomorrow to the Thatcham market on the 22nd December.

We've been testing different types of packaging for the increasing number of postal orders we have been getting. This is what I think is working best in terms of padding for the honey and presentation.

What do you think?

We have 12 of the larger gift and 10 of the smaller ones left. They can be purchased on our website.

After having sold out, we are now back in stock of our popular lip balms. They can be purchased on our website for delivery or collection.

www.bensberkshirebees.co.uk

We have just two more events left this year both in our home town of Thatcham. We will be at the Christmas Lights Switch on next Friday and then just before Christmas we will bring our remaining stock to the Thatcham Christmas Market - perfect for any last minute Christmas presents.

We had a busy time @shawhouse1581 , nice to see some regular customers and attendees from talks throughout the year. It was also good to catch up with some of the many stallholders we see regularly,

In the mean time you can order via the website - the Christmas gift sets in particular have been flying out the door.

Today we will be at Shaw House from 11am to 3pm. This is always a lovely Christmas Market.

It's Black Friday. We are a very small business and our bees work really hard to make our produce so they don't really want to offer a discount. We were thinking that given everyone will be saving money on their purchases it would be the perfect time to treat yourself to some of our honey or honey soaps.

The Christmas gift set we launched a few days ago has been flying out the door. We only have a limited number of the bags we have launched a second version, this one contains honey, lip balm and a honey server and is available for £11 on our website. These will be available for collection from Thursday 5th December.

www.bensberkshirebee.co.uk

In the run up to Christmas we have launched a Christmas Gift set with each of our most popular products, West Berkshire Honey, Honey Soap and a lip balm, all presented in a reusable gift bag. These are priced at £16 with limited numbers available on our website. They can be collected locally from Thatcham or sent out in the post with postage of £4.

#Christmasgift #honey #westberkshire #berkshire

We've been getting more and more postal orders from across the country so have spent some time upgrading our postal process. We will now be sending our product protected in this appropriately named honey comb paper and only using recorded delivery. Orders made in the next few weeks will arrive before Christmas.

We took a trip to our local supermarket to see where the honey was from? Can you guess where these honeys were from by the labels? #buylocal

From our bees in West Berkshire, Ben's Berkshire Bees products make perfect stocking fillers. We have honey soaps, lip balms and beeswax candles available.

Why does are campaign for honey labelling by country matter? Well, many jars of honey in the supermarket including "premium" brands are labelled with "A blend of EU and Non-EU Honeys". Where is that likely to be from? (It's China by the way).

The law requires a country of origin but the labeling used is a cope out - basically saying what is in the jar could be from anywhere on the earth. Even clothing has better labelling - I have never seen a T-shirt labelled as made in "an EU or Non-EU Country".

When packers import honey they are required to register the import and provide certification. The chart below shows the source by country. 72% of honey imported to the UK comes from China, the next largest country is Mexico at 4.1%.

Given how much comes from China it should be relatively easy for honey packers to be able to know where the source was. It should, therefore, be easy to label products with an actual source of origin. In our letter to @lrjdillon (our MP) we called for a change to the Honey Regulations to require the specific country of origin rather than essentially "anywhere".

@britishbeekeepers

#beekeeping #beekeepers #britishbeekeeping

We are backing family farmers! Whilst wellies are part of the beekeeping uniform, today we will wearing them supporting the British Farmers. Today our family farmers are headed to London to lobby the Government on the changes to the tax rules which have thrown generation planning into chaos. Farmers plan over the long term and the budget changes have cut across plans for maintaining farms in the long term.

Bee farmers work with small farmers up and down the country on space for apiaries and pollinators.

We believe that needs to consider alternatives ways to tax the "wealth generation" of land increases which can't be realized without the sale of land. For example high capital gains charges when farm land is converted for development.

We hope the farmers have a good day getting their message across.

We've set up a company page on Linkedin. Here we are posting/sharing thoughts on the honey industry. You can find us at

www.linkedin.com/company/bensberkshirebees

Little skep candles in front of our actual skep beehive. These little candles are always popular sellers at events.

We are delighted to be attending the Ashmore Green WI Craft fair in The Acland Hall in Cold Ash on the 16th November.

We will have fresh honey from Ashmore Green available for sale as well our range of beeswax candles and honey soaps.

Last year there were a lovely range of local crafts available and so course a delicious section of homemade cakes.

It is only £1 to enter to raise money for the Thatcham Volunteer Bureau.

The Newbury Farmers' Market is on today until 1pm in the market place. This bread is from the @wildfrogbakehouse which is the best bakery I have come across in a long time - I'm told the secret is using French flour. You can also buy honey from us, flavoured oil seed rape oils from @stainswickfarm , fresh meat and fish, doughnuts, fermented foods from @fermentedbygeorge and more.

We will be at the Newbury Farmers' Market on 3rd November from 9-1 in the Market Place.

We will have a good supply of Honey, Honey Soaps and Lipbalms - perfect little Christmas presents for the organised!

@newbury_farmers_market

#newbury #westberkshire #berkshire #localhoney #supportlocalbusiness

This is a cute little video of a bee emerging from its cell for the first time.

Walking a swarm of bees into a hive. Once a few bees get the idea the others all follow.

Final batch of suger syrup being produced to top up the bees feed for winter.

We've been making soup with our @berkshirefarmgirl pumpkin. Lots of great pumpkin flesh!

Yummy cheese. We had a really good experience from @pangcheeseshop this week. Having seen an Instagram post I fancied some cheese so I went online and ordered some. There is a massive range with free local delivery. The front cheese in the picture was sticky toffee cheddar with was delicious. Will definitely be returning to order our Christmas Cheese board!

Ben's Berkshire Bees is a Bee Farm based in Thatcham will hives across West Berkshire: from Theale to Welford. We produce West Berkshire honey, honey soaps and beeswax products.

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