Celebrating Honey and Bee Farming

At the time of writing, even though the bees are heading into their winter slumber, there is a new spring like start at Northumberland Honey Company who have just taken on a new bee farming apprentice.

Katy who is 30 left a career in HR to become one of many apprentices trained by Northumberland Honey Company who are proud members of The Bee Farmers Association Apprenticeship Scheme.

The apprenticeship scheme was set up in 2014 to ensure that skills in the craft of bee farming are not lost for future generations. Bee Farming is both an art, craft and science, which is why it takes 3 years to become a ‘bee farmer’ with a lot of honey bee management coming down to knowledge but also intuition, built up over years of experience.

There are currently only 500 commercial beekeepers in the UK with an average age over 66. With only around 100 beekeepers in a position to take on employees and train apprentices.

To date the apprenticeship scheme has successfully trained over 40 apprentices over the 3 year programme with this figure expected to grow significantly over the coming years.

Employment in the industry is a big problem, with most bee farmers being one man bands and not able to grow, after all where would you find an already skilled beekeeper in the UK to employ??

This leaves those nearing retirement with a problem, few skilled people to help and even fewer who could take on the business. Coupled with the fact the UK only produces 10% of all honey consumed in the UK with the vast majority 90%+ imported, it leaves the industry vulnerable to imports and questionable quality or provenance of honey, we all know about the imported adulterated honey scandals.

This National Honey day (21^st October 2025) is all about raising awareness of the importance of bees, and food security where the UK could be producing a lot more of the honey it consumes. The Bee Farmers Association and their apprenticeship scheme is vital to the efforts of increasing the amount of UK honey produced (with an aim from 2014 to increase UK production output by 500 tonnes) and make UK honey more available on the shelves. Here in Northumberland we’re not only producing quality honey, but we’re making big strides towards a future for bee farmers that sees more of the younger generation being trained in this historic craft which very much has a place in the modern world.  

In the words of Einstein, without bees man would have 4 years left!   

On National Honey Day it’s time to celebrate everything great about honey, the precious bee farming industry, and how good honey is for you with all the health benefits.

In a world of AI and automation, beekeeping is the one industry that will never be overtaken by robots, but by the caring human hand and is an industry to be celebrated and protected for the future.

Date of Publication 14th October 2025