Mocktails (non-alcoholic cocktails) have become very popular in recent years, especially for people that are looking to reduce their alcohol consumption or need to avoid it on a night out when they driving. Why should the designated driver have to drink orange juice or cola all night while others are enjoying all manner of exciting cocktails? A good mocktail will give you all the fun and flavour without the alcohol. The best mocktails are a special blend of ingredients and flavours, and not just a familiar cocktail blend with the alcohol left out...
We should be in no doubt that the supermarket would look very different without bees. Bees are responsible for pollinating almost 20% of all flowering plant species worldwide and approximately 400 different types of plants that we use as food sources. In total that's around a third of everything we eat every week. With more people moving towards a plant based diet, it's likely that for many people that number is actually much higher. It's not just food where we would notice a difference in the supermarket either, so join us as we take a walk around a supermarket in a world without bees...
There are many flowers that are edible and some like cauliflower and broccoli we might already be eating quite often, even if we don't really think of them as flowers! If you have a herb garden, the vast majority of flowers that appear on your herb plants can be eaten, and generally taste similar to the leaves that we more commonly eat....
You are probably all familiar with the term 'swarm' as a simple collective name for a group of bees. However it's not entirely accurate to say that most groups of bees you see are 'swarming'. In the language of bee keeping swarming is a very specific bee behaviour and a swarm is used to describe bees that are in that process...
This week's blog is a handy guide to some of the best public wildflower gardens that you can visit this summer. We've tried to cover as much of the UK as possible so hopefully there will be one not too far away from you. Many of these gardens we have visited ourselves and some have been recommended by family and good friends of Just Bee...
There are many ways to make a suitable bee hotel for your garden, in this blog we'll show you a couple of different ways that you can create a perfect space for solitary bees to live and breed. While we all call them bee hotels, they are in actual fact more of a 'bee nursery' as they are usually used as a safe place for solitary bees to raise their young...
After some cold and wet weather, summer certainly has felt like it's on the way lately with some lovely sunny spring days and a very welcome rise in temperature. There have also been plenty of bees buzzing around my back garden already. Even my little bee garden which was left dormant over winter (and in a pretty sorry state, I have to admit) has started flowering again before I've even had a chance to do anything to it!...
The passing of Queen Elizabeth II last year was a defining moment in the history of our country. Regardless of how you feel about the monarchy as a whole, I think many of us felt a desperate sense of loss and more than a little uneasiness for the future. The tradition of beekeeping has long been a part of Royal Family life, not only has King Charles been active in beekeeping for many years, but as Prince of Wales he has a long history of highlighting the plight of bees and urging for their protection and welfare....
When we look inside a beehive we hope to find a whole colony of healthy bees and lots of delicious honey! But aside from the obvious have you ever wondered what exactly makes up a beehive and how it functions? From the outside they may just look like a big wooden box, but there may be more going on inside than you might imagine...
While it's true that honey and refined sugar do share a similar make-up for the most part (both being largely made up of fructose and glucose sugars) there are some important differences...
As you might have seen in Joe's video blog posted recently, we did some amazing things together last year. Our fantastic customers planting wild-flower seeds all over the UK will no doubt make a real and genuine difference to many bees this year- increasing their chances of survival and helping to create ongoing healthy bee populations...
