Sustainability
We founded Black Bee Honey in 2017 to support British bees and their keepers, and that’s still our mission today, alongside a wider aim to reconnect people to nature and do our best to protect it.
We’re committed to creating a positive impact environmentally and socially. This is where you'll find out what we’re doing now and our aims for the future.
We’ll be submitting our B Corp application mid 2022 and the impact report which is a vital part of that will be published here soon.
These are challenging times for us all, but by making meaningful changes there is hope of a much brighter future. Read on to find out more.
PEOPLE
We have direct relationships with all of the beekeepers we work with. Unlike China with bee farms on an epic scale, British honey is sourced from much smaller apiaries - with bee farmers often working solo or with other family members. Whilst this has it’s challenges, we personally know our beekeepers and means we’re confident that our supply chain is as clean as a whistle.
We pay our bee farmers a fair price for the honey they produce. Whilst this is relatively high in comparison to much cheaper imports, this is the real price of honey.
Importing cheap honey from foreign countries into the market means consumers view that as the cost of honey, damaging British beekeepers ability to sell properly priced quality honey.
PRODUCT
Having a direct relationship with every beekeeper means we can ensure maximum traceability, and is how we’re able to put the individual beekeeper's name and apiary location on every single jar.
We can also be confident that what you're buying is actually honey. Which may sound strange, but honey is the second most adulterated food in the world… (we’ll let that sit with you for a second).
PLANET
Having honey produced from UK hives, driven to our packers in Lancashire, and then driven down to our office in Wiltshire to be distributed, has a much lower carbon footprint to that of imported honey. We are still working hard to reduce the miles the honey travels before landing on the table of our customers, which will further reduce the products carbon footprint.
Working with Climate Partner, Black Bee Honey calculated the Carbon Footprint of a jar of honey, offsetting their greenhouse gas emissions by funding a forest protection project in Brazil which is approved by Climate Partner. Black Bee Honey chose to support this project as they also offer beekeeping training as a way of reducing hunger. Black Bee Honey will continue to seek out suitable projects closer to home.
Since the 1930’s we’ve lost over 97% of our wildflower meadows which is an essential habitat for pollinators and many other species. We give 2% of our turnover to Plantlife UK with the goal to create and manage 1000 acres of new wildflower meadow by 2030.
CULTURE
We believe in paying everyone fairly, from suppliers to employees, and we’re proud to be an official Living Wage employer.
We’ve also implemented the 6 hour working day (an alternative to the 4 day working week).
All employees are trained to be beekeepers, and throughout the year are outdoors caring for our colonies as we’re conscious of the many health benefits associated with being outdoors.