Botany Bees

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Botany Bees Located in rural Leicestershire, we sell our honey from the gate. It is a seasonal product :)

02/01/2026

Happy New Year to all our customers 🥳

We will be closed until further notice 😔

We have sold out of honey 🍯 until the next harvest, so we're making the most of it and having a well earned break 🥱

🛌😴💤🐝

Apologies to all who have been waiting for honey. I won't tempt fate and say normal service has resumed, but there is fi...
15/06/2025

Apologies to all who have been waiting for honey. I won't tempt fate and say normal service has resumed, but there is finally some honey in jars 🍯🐝

We found a new colony of bees in some old equipment today - see link below ...https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1AmkrWxv1...
15/06/2025

We found a new colony of bees in some old equipment today - see link below ...

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1AmkrWxv11/

We popped them in a new brood box, and combined them with a queenless colony (hence the tower). It was all a bit buzzy for a while as they adjusted to improved living conditions 😆 which gave me the opportunity to capture some close up pollen pants 🐝 🌼

15/06/2025

At our last apiary visit, we stacked up some old equipment ready to collect next time. Life then did things beyond our control so the gap between visits was much longer than we anticipated 🫣

Fast forward to today. A passing swarm clearly didn't think the equipment was past it and moved in during our absence. (It really is though - there shouldn't be gaps) 😁🐝

It's the beginning of the silly season when the insect world strives to cause mayhem. Really they are getting on with th...
29/04/2025

It's the beginning of the silly season when the insect world strives to cause mayhem. Really they are getting on with their business and keeping our fridges full of fruits and veggies. Here's how it may look 👀

Bumblebees are building up their colonies right now. They may have chosen an empty bird box, a hole in the ground, or a hedgehog house in your garden. If you get too close they might dive bomb you, or scratch a warning, but a sting is unusual. Their season is particularly short with most colonies dying out by the end of July. They come in all sizes, from small fluffy tree bees to whopping jumper wearing bumblers 🐝

You may notice lots of solitary bees hanging around your insect hotels. Nature is so clever, mumma bee lays eggs that will become males nearest the door so they hatch first in spring. They wait for the females to hatch so they can mate straight away, thus securing the next generation 🐝

Queen wasps are busy building their nests. Watch out for the tell-tale papery structures in outhouses and lofts. They are made from chewed up paper or wood and are great feats of engineering. As grumpy as we are about wasps, they are essential to our ecosystems. They too are pollinators and the adults consume nectar, but they also feed protein matter to their larvae, so they save us from being knee deep in dead insects. That would be pretty stinky 😷

And our favourite, honey bees. It is swarm season, so you may notice a cloud of bees pass overhead, or see a large cluster of them hanging around. As noisy and as intimidating as it may appear, the bees are calm and unlikely to cause harm, however they do need collecting by an experienced beekeeper once they've clustered. If left, they could make their home somewhere unwanted, in a chimney or cavity wall for instance. Once in, they require expert removal which is costly.

If a swarm of honeybees enter your property then early action is required to prevent them from becoming resident. They are unlikely to just go away.

I am sitting underneath a blossom-heavy fruit tree as I write this, and it is very buzzy indeed. This is standard pollinator behaviour, and no intervention is needed.

We need our pollinators so badly, more now than at any other time in history. With the continuing loss of our green space, we encourage you to plant insect friendly plants, leave a wild patch in the garden, or perhaps don't mow the lawn so often 🌻🌸🌹🌼🏵🌺

And we have exploded into bee 🐝 season 🤩 There's a lot of nectar and pollen coming in 🍯 Extra supers on all the hives in...
29/04/2025

And we have exploded into bee 🐝 season 🤩 There's a lot of nectar and pollen coming in 🍯 Extra supers on all the hives in readiness 🌸

Check out the ghost bee 🐝 in the second photo 📸 😂

A long overdue update ... We may have been quiet on social media, and our bees are in snooze mode during the colder weat...
24/02/2025

A long overdue update ...

We may have been quiet on social media, and our bees are in snooze mode during the colder weather, but we have been busy behind the scenes 🙂

After much deliberation, we have swapped our jars, and now use a local supplier. Much less stress (glass by post is not insured), much less waste (some jars inevitably break during transit), and happy to be supporting local business. Thanks Bee Equipped Mike Briggs🙂

No one ever comes back and asks for a smaller jar, so our large jar size is now 1lb rather than 12 oz. This is now the only size we sell. They still sport the pretty labels 🏷 with thanks to Lottie Rennie, so you will recognise our jars out in the wild 😜

Our honey is of single hive extraction, and the price remains the same per ounce as 2023/24 👌

Available now @ £10 per jar from the gate. Please message beforehand to make sure someone is available.

PS the bees have been out and about during the milder weather - it's always so good to see them after the winter 🐝 🐝 🐝 🐝

There's a small amount of honey jarred up and ready. Even the cat was surprised! 🙀😻
07/07/2024

There's a small amount of honey jarred up and ready. Even the cat was surprised! 🙀😻

You turn your back for one minute 😒 🐝🐝🐝
03/07/2024

You turn your back for one minute 😒 🐝🐝🐝

25/06/2024

😍

It's 29°C. By 'eck! 🥵 But it makes the honey runny 🍯
25/06/2024

It's 29°C. By 'eck! 🥵 But it makes the honey runny 🍯

Our honey extractor is like Trigger's broom. New part every year and sometimes it's the same new part ... 🐝🍯🛠️
25/06/2024

Our honey extractor is like Trigger's broom. New part every year and sometimes it's the same new part ...

🐝🍯🛠️

Address


Opening Hours

Monday 09:00 - 18:00
Tuesday 09:00 - 17:00
Wednesday 09:00 - 18:00
Thursday 09:00 - 17:00
Friday 09:00 - 17:00
Saturday 09:00 - 18:00
Sunday 09:00 - 18:00

Telephone

+447914451651

Website

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Botany Bees - a bit of background

Botany Bees happened a little by accident. We moved to our present location, and the family home, at Botany Bay two years ago - a smallholding with 6 acres. We knew we wanted to adopt some of “the old ways” in our care-taking of it, however the tradition of growing vegetables on a large scale didn’t really appeal, although we talked about keeping chickens and various other livestock, including bees.

Whilst we waited for some inspiration of a conservational nature to strike, we focused on clearing the years of accumulated, no longer useful, possessions (without finding that million pound antique item) and tidying up the land, parts of which contained years of debris and scrap that should have made it to the local tip moons ago. We began to manage the meadow in the traditional way, mowing and bailing once a year. It wasn’t long before wildflowers started popping up. That inspired us to sow strips of wildflower in various parts of the fields, with a view to helping the pollinators. We made lots of plans to introduce indigenous and deciduous trees, as well as quite an extended planting programme for the coming years.

Eventually talk came back to bees and hives, especially as they were kept here years ago, so when we were offered first refusal on a “job lot” - hives, colonies, equipment, we took it. However, before we even arranged delivery (!) a swarm came our way, and management of a further hive off site and deeper into the Charnwood Forest. Suddenly we were extracting honey and making all sorts of bee products before we had chance to set up the planned hives.

Our sudden projection into fully-fledged beekeepers is something of a surprise, albeit a delightful one. Honey bees are without doubt some of the most fascinating creatures on our planet, and we look forward to sharing snippets of our journey with them with you!