National Honeybee Day

What is World Bee Day?

World Bee Day is a global event with a pretty clear purpose:

To “raise awareness on the essential role bees and other pollinators play in keeping people and the planet healthy, and on the many challenges they face today… to promote actions that will protect and enhance pollinators and their habitats, improve their abundance and diversity, and support the sustainable development of beekeeping.”

World Bee Day has been celebrated since 2018, but the passion behind it all began long before that. It was the hard work and dedication of Anton Jansa, a true pioneer of modern bee-keeping, that led the Slovenian government to bring the idea to the UN General Assembly. The rest, as they say, is history- bee-rilliant!

What does World Bee Day mean to us?

Bee-keeping is in our blood. The welfare and safety of our bees is a cause we hold very close to our hearts, and the efforts of our global community to keep them safe and to protect the future of these pretty perfect little pollinators is what keeps us going.

Without bees, there would be no Hilltop.

We’re a business that grew though our own hives- and our own passion for bees, their amazing abilities and their striking work ethic. We’re a business for good, not for profit- and that means that we will always strive to spread awareness, to educate and to fight for the rights of our amazing bees, whatever it takes.

We want everyone to discover just how amazing bees are, and why we should never take them for granted.

How can you support World Bee Day?

The thing is, it’s not just up to bee-keepers to protect the bees and other pollinators. We all have a responsibility to fight this fight.

Without bees, we’d struggle to put food on the table. A third of all the plants we eat have been pollinated by bees, and if their population decreases, so do the farms- and in turn, so do we.

It takes around 1,100 bees, visiting up to 4 million flowers, to make 1kg of honey (incidentally, did you know that bees are the only animal that make food humans can eat? Amazing, huh!). So, without them, we’d lose that delicious honey and all the powerful health benefits it brings.

We’re talking natural relief for sore throats and congestion, natural antiseptic properties that have the ability to soothe minor wounds and burns, a safe and natural alternative to processed, sugary additives… the list goes on.

Without bees, we’d lose that vital balance between us humans, plants, animals and the environment. Entire eco-systems would die out and our futures would be cut short.

So we’d say World Bee Day is pretty important, wouldn’t you?! Here are just a few ways that you can get involved today:

• Grow a bee-friendly garden. Or a window box. Whatever space you have, turn it into a safe haven for bees. Plants such as daisies and red clover are so easy to grow and can help to bring more bees to your area. Bees also love cornflower, foxgloves, and scabious too. Get the kids involved and make it a real family effort.
• Become a bee-saving superhero. Leave a small dish filled with a few pebbles and some water to bring essential hydration to hard working bees.
• Prohibit the pesticides. When you tend to your garden, make an effort to cut down or completely eliminate the harmful chemicals you use. A recent study found that bees exposed to pesticides produced 30% less offspring- and if this trend continues, we may lose them altogether.

Doing our bit at Hilltop Honey

Here at Hilltop Honey, we’re fully aware of the responsibility we have to ensure that we protect and safeguard the future of our bees. We want to help educate and raise awareness of the importance of World Bee Day so that we can all share in this effort too.

As a business, we’re proud to do things a little differently.

We only use carefully selected suppliers, we only source fully traceable honey and we only use sustainable packaging with a strict zero waste food production policy.

We champion our Bee Welfare Policy, putting it at the heart of all that we do, both as a business and as individuals.

We give 25% of profits from sales of our Adopt a Bee package to the Honeypot Charity, and we’re fully committed to being a Carbon Neutral business too- supporting carbon offsetting projects within the UK and across South America as part of our alliance with Climate Partner.

From the honey made in our own Hilltop hives, to the responsibly sourced, authentic honey from carefully selected suppliers worldwide, we promise you that we will only ever take the honey that the bees do not need- and the rest we leave, so that our amazing buzzing friends can continue with their essential work of protecting the planet, one plant at a time.