If you know where to look, London's swarming with bee hives and John Chapple knows all about the capital's secret workers
Despite supermarket shelves being stocked with blended honeys from the tanks of multinationals or manuka honey shipped all the way from New Zealand, if you visit your local farmer's market or neighbourhood grocers' shop, you may well find honey that has its origins in hives just down the road. Even in London. "Go back as far as records will go and you’ll find bees have always been kept around," says John Chapple, chairman of the London Bee Keepers Association and one of the many amateurs who keeps hives across the capital. John, who has been bee-keeping for 20 years, says: "I’m very lucky, as I’m chairman and I’ve been around a long time – I keep them in some of the royal parks and I keep them in Lambeth Palace, and lots of other places."
As soon as you're aware of London bee-keeping, you'll start noticing hives – in parks, alongside railways, even in the most unexpected of places. "I’ve got a hive on the festival hall – that’s really keeping bees in concrete," says John. He also has a friend who keeps two hives on the 10th floor balcony of his tower block flat – but shall remain nameless as the council classifies the bees as pets and as such a no-no.
John says that London is perfect for bee-keeping: "We’re very lucky in any big city really, as you have such a variety of trees and plants and shrubs, far more than our country cousins have, who might just have one field of rape. And in London we’re very lucky as the amount of pesticides used is very low. You might get one person in a garden who uses it, but that’s only a very small area, compared to a farmer who would spray acres."
If you go down to the hood today: honey in the capital
The result? Some remarkable honeys. "There’s no particular flavour in London – it’s multi-flora. But that’s what makes it good. People have exotic plants in their gardens and window boxes, so you get a really interesting flavoured honey."
It's not all sweetness though, as bee-keeping is a tough business. Every winter, John explains, they'll lose about 10 per cent of their hives on average. In some cases, it's down to queens "who have just given up the ghost," after mating badly. But in some cases, the reason for the colony collapse remains a mystery. "I don't know what it is. I say it's Marie Celeste," says John, anxiously. "Last year I lost lots of bees. I found reasons for some, but I ended up with five hives I just could not explain." Indeed, if 10 per cent is the average winter mortality rate, it was up to about 60 per cent in London during the winter of 2006-2007.
Diseases and colony collapses not only hit the bee-keeper and the consumer but also potentially reflect on wider environmental issues. "We're struggling, and we get very little help from the government," says John "They don't seem to realise how important bees are – not for us, but for pollination, for everything. Without bees you don't have any berries, without berries, you don't have any birds, it goes on and on and on. I'm very concerned. When you start analysing, it's frightening how important bees are to the chain, and anything that breaks the chain is bad."
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