2020-04-06_Daily_Express

Daily Express Monday, April 6, 2020 31

Pictures: MURRAY SANDERS / SOLO

back towards childhood,” he says. “I’ve

realised that sometimes just sitting and staring

at something outside is very

therapeutic.

“It allows you time to

discover new things, and

nurse that sense of

wonder. I’m much calmer

and I’m much less cer-

tain about things.

“But I’m much

more relaxed

about being less certain.” Now Roger has

written a beguiling account about the lessons

he has learned from the hives he attempts to

gently nurture.

“My book is part of a wider library of

natural history writing, which is saying to

people, ‘Look after them while you’ve got

them’,” he says.

“The last estimate was that if we didn’t

have the bees pollinating for us in the UK it

would cost £900million to do it ourselves, but

we can’t because we don’t have the kit.”

It’s the way bees fit into world ecology

that Roger finds so extraordinary, and so

moving.

“The way it’s made me connect bits

of nature that I hadn’t previously

connected is one of the biggest

changes in me,” he says.

“You look at a single bee on a

dandelion and that bee is doing

maybe 12 to 14 flights a day, visiting

maybe 40 to 50 plants to produce one

twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in the

duration of a worker bee’s life.

“There might be 50,000 of these

foragers in a hive, and there are 250,000

hives in the UK.

“There are 240 species of bee and

27,000 species of insect in the UK.

“Take all that into consideration and you

suddenly realise this invisible interdepend-

ence that we all have: these trillions of lines of

nature connecting.

“It thrills me because I’m a child at heart

learning about things I don’t understand,

but it frightens me because of the way we’ve

been treating it. If you go to East Anglia and

into those huge mono-cultural beet fields,

there are just two types of bird, a paucity of

insects, and no bees.”

A

ND HIS scorn for those putting

down plastic grass is immense:

“What are you thinking about?”

Perhaps the biggest lesson from his experi-

ments with what he calls “liquid gold” is the

knowledge of nature that can come through

working with the cycle of the seasons. This has

given him a new-found respect for the honey-

bee and the threats it faces.

“If you can re-engage your fascination and

awe with nature it will never stop teaching

you things,” he adds. “The biggest joy has

been connecting with what is

going on out there.”

●Liquid Gold: Bees and the

Pursuit of Midlife Honey by

Roger Morgan-Grenville

(Icon Books, £12.99) is out

now. For free UK delivery,

call Express Bookshop on

01872 562310 or order via

expressbookshop.co.uk

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WHEN we buy a jar of honey in a

supermarket we imagine that it

has come from a beekeeper who

has taken out the frames, spun

them, jarred up the proceeds

and passed them along into the

food chain.

“After all, that describes a

generally accepted definition of

honey which has lasted around

8,000 years,” says author Roger

Morgan-Grenville.

But while researching his

book, he discovered that most of

the jars of honey in supermarkets

are produced using “rather more

industrial and chemical”

processes than you might think.

“For a start, it has probably

had all the pollen filtered out of it

so that it stays nice and runny.

“But not having pollen allows it

to be sold as ‘blend of EU and

non EU honeys’ which is code for

several giant processing plants

in South America and China.”

There may be a picture of an

English garden on the label, but

the truth is murkier than that.

“Honey is a living thing, but the

nutrients in it can only live up to

about 40C. The honey in the

average jar has been pasteurised

up to about 75C and is now

technically dead, no more than

‘honey-flavoured sugary syrup’.

“EU regulations insist modern

honey has a two-year sell-by

date, so how come they’ve taken

3,000-year old honey out of a

pyramid and eaten it?

“Modern honey is almost

certainly dead. Supermarkets

supply what we want and try to

get it to us as quickly, and

cheaply, as they can.”

He says that most of what they

sell has no right to be called

honey: “I can’t even feed it to my

bees to get them through the

remaining bit of winter.” Roger is

calling on us to support local

delis selling honey from reliable

beekeepers. “Everything about it

will be better,” he promises.

HONEY, WE SHRUNK

THE GOODNESS

d

you

pend-

ines of

heart

rstand,

‘If you can

re-engage your

fascination with

nature it will never

stop teaching

you things’

LIFE IS SWEET: Roger with

one of his precious hives