I was very fortunate this week to be a part of a wonderful event at The Lancaster Hotel in London — The London Honey Show. Famed for being the first hotel in London, if not the UK for keeping bees on the roof this seemed a very apt location and, wow! What a success!

The room from start to finish was filled with people and Jo and her team got it spot on with a healthy mix of exhibitors and excellent speakers — though sadly I missed every single one of them and so am going on third-party reviews, all of which were excellent. Of particular note was that of Tim Baker, a Head Master who has encouraged his school to take up beekeeping with superb results; more on that later. There was a real mixture of exhibitors as laid out here below:

Apimaye (hives)

Let’s Go Let’s Grow (Charity)

BeeCraft Magazine

French Flint (glass jar company)

Valerie Littlewood (artist and infamous blogger about all types of bees)

The Gift - lovely bee gifts (and a lot else)

Lush

Gilchrist & Soames - offering lovely toiletries

Omlet

Elvin Roberts of Major Bees

Throughout the evening there was a wonderful atmosphere and one that was very relaxed and friendly (helped along with a little alcohol and nibbles)

There were several speakers including the popular bee journalist and blogger for the Telegraph, Ian Douglas. Tim Baker sounds like he won over a lot of people during his speech and I believe he even brought along some of his students for the evening. Lastly there was Christopher Beale, another long term beekeeper talking about marketing of bee products. I am devastated to have missed them all but if you would like to know more about the presenters, the London Honey Show website has more information.

Then there were the actual awards themselves which I had the honour of presenting. Personally I think it was because I was the tallest beekeeper there who could actually see over the crowds of people rather than the beekeeping DVD that I was there to promote alongside Charlie Dimmock!

-Advertisement-



Before I talk about the honey awards I must give a special mention to Barnaby Shaw who started up Bee Urban in Kennington. He won the "Best Beekeeper" award and I was interested to hear that it was a completely subjective award given to a deserved beekeeper rather than one who achieved the best honey yield. It sounds like he is doing a great job down there and I really want to get along and take a look.