Ethical beekeeping is a way of keeping bees that puts the health of the colony first and treats honey as something you share only once the bees have what they need. It's a fairly new phrase for a very old idea, and it's started to matter to anyone who cares where the honey in their food or drink comes from. The way honey is taken from a hive affects the bees long after the jars are filled, so a decision a beekeeper makes in August still shows up in how that colony looks the following March.
What makes beekeeping ethical
Most of it comes down to how much you take and how closely you watch. In a good summer a hive will often make more honey than it needs, and when demand is high there's always a pull to take as much of it as you can. Ethical beekeeping means saying no to that.
It also means paying attention to the things most people never see. Our beekeepers check whether a hive has enough airflow and whether there's any sign of disease. They look at how strong the colony is heading into autumn and whether the queen is laying well or starting to struggle. None of it is glamorous, and a lot of the job is knowing when to close the lid and leave the bees to get on with it.
Why we only take surplus honey
This is the rule we care about most, so we'll keep it simple. We only take honey from our hives when we're sure they have a surplus.
Bees don't make honey for us. They make it as a food store to get the colony through the months when there's little or no nectar about, and winter is the big one. A hive that's had too much taken can starve before spring, and there isn't a bottle of anything worth that. So before every harvest our beekeepers go through each colony and work out what it can genuinely spare. If a hive has had a lean season we don't touch it that year, even if the hive next to it is overflowing.
Looking after the hives all year
Welfare isn't something you think about once a year on harvest day. In winter we insulate the hives to shield the colonies from the cold while they can't get out to forage. Once spring arrives the focus moves to the garden, and we grow plenty of bee-friendly flowers around the apiary so the bees have nectar and pollen close to home right through summer.
Our beekeepers have noticed that colonies given that kind of steady care through the seasons tend to come out of winter stronger, and a strong colony is a healthy and productive one. You can read more about the thinking behind all this on our values page.
From the hive to the glass
The honey in our Honey Whisky, Honey Rum, Honey Vodka and Honey Tequila is that same surplus honey, harvested in exactly the way we've described here. We watched it being capped in our own hives before it ever went near a still, and that's why we know what it does to the flavour of the finished spirit. If you'd like to try them side by side our gift bundles are the easiest way, and there are plenty of ideas for using them in our honey cocktail recipes.
The wider work behind it
Ethical beekeeping sits alongside a few other commitments we hold ourselves to. We support Bees for Development, and we design honey labels for the Bee Better Project at HMP Hindley. We've trained more than 500 people through our beekeeping courses and we're building a dedicated beekeeping school at our Wiltshire site.
If you'd rather see it in practice than read about it, our beekeeping courses take place at the hives and are open to complete beginners. And if you're buying honey anywhere, it's worth asking the producer how much they leave in the hive for winter.
