Adopt a bee

Adopt a bee, and follow her colony through the year.

A worker bee lives about six weeks. The colony she belongs to can go on for years, if somebody looks after it. Support one of ours and we will write to you every month with how it is faring.

Rosemary and wild thyme on the plateau

Why it matters

Almost everything on the table passes through them first.

75%

of the world’s leading food crops depend, at least in part, on animal pollination.

$577bn

the upper estimate of the world’s annual crop output that depends directly on pollinators.

2,000,000

flowers visited by a colony for roughly 450 g of honey.

1/12

of a teaspoon — the honey one worker bee makes in her whole life.

What they are up against

Keeping a colony alive is not a given.

In the winter of 2019/20, Spanish beekeepers lost more than a third of their colonies — the heaviest losses of the thirty-seven countries surveyed. The causes stack up: the varroa mite, which reached Europe in the seventies and has never left; pesticide residue in the forage; scrubland cleared for other uses; and, on the plateau, summers that arrive earlier and drier every year.

Every colony we keep is fed through the lean months, treated for varroa twice a year, and moved only with the season. None of that is free, and none of it is certain. Adopting a bee pays for the part of the year when a hive gives nothing back.

The plans

Choose a colony, then choose a plan.

Both colonies report their readings on the home page. Whichever you adopt, the honey that arrives is the honey those bees made.

Your colony

See the live readings

Drone

Follow your colony through the year, month by month.

€6/ month

A letter by email at the start of every month
How the weather ran over the apiary, and how the colony met it
Honey made, and the brood nest held against heat and damp
Your colony’s live readings, whenever you want them

Worker

The letter, and a jar of your colony’s own honey each month.

From€28/ month

Everything in the monthly letter
One 500 g jar every month, from the colony you adopted
Carriage within Spain included

Queen

Enough for the house, and for the people you feed.

From€65/ month

Everything in the monthly letter
Three 500 g jars every month, from the colony you adopted
Carriage within Spain included

Colony

The largest standing order we take.

From€104/ month

Everything in the monthly letter
Three 1 kg jars every month, from the colony you adopted
Carriage within Spain included

A longer arrangement

Build your hive

A single payment establishes a new hive on the plateau, in your name, worked by us alongside our own. From its first full season you receive a tenth of everything it produces, sent once a year with carriage included, for as long as the colony lives.

This is honey paid for in advance, not money lent. If the colony does not come through a winter, your hive moves to another of ours at no charge — the arrangement continues, the bees change.

€480one payment

A hive established on our land and worked by us
A tenth of everything it produces, for as long as the colony lives
Sent once a year, carriage within Spain included
The monthly letter, from your own hive

The small print

Cancel whenever you like, from the link at the foot of any monthly letter.
We ship within Spain only. Carriage is included in every plan that sends honey.
Prices include VAT.
If your colony does not survive a winter, your adoption moves to another of ours at no charge, and we will say so plainly in that month’s letter.
The monthly letter arrives by email. Nothing is sent by post but the honey.

Already supporting a colony?

Enter the address you subscribed with and we will email you a link to change or cancel your plan.