The very next weekend, Laurence returned home from rugby at 5pm and the exact same thing happened. The sky turned back. Another swarm clustered in the same tree. This time Laurence wasn’t going to give up what was clearly his destiny and he decided to get himself a beehive and house the bees himself. Laurence was now officially a beekeeper!
Laurence watched on with great excitement as the beekeeper shook the branch and collected the swarm into a cardboard box. The beekeeper left with the swarm and Laurence got back to his post-match recovery routine – a bath and a curry from the local takeaway. A true athlete!
Black Mountain Honey was born when, in 2015, a huge swarm of honey bees landed in Laurence Edwards’ garden in Birmingham. He was returning home from a game of rugby, and when he got to his house, the sky was black with bees. A large swarm had landed on a small apple tree in his garden. He was bemused, excited and unsure of what to do next. He contacted the local beekeeping association, and they sent around a beekeeper to collect the swarm.
Our story.
In the first year, this colony was split a couple of times and by the end of 2015, Laurence was the proud owner of four colonies of bees.
After 12 months in Birmingham, Laurence’s circumstances changed and he moved to North Wales, with his wife, Helen. The 2 hour journey to North Wales was very eventful as the colonies of bees started to leak in the car and try to escape through the windows. He took his very first sting to the face!
Arriving in North Wales, into a village called Nercwys, at the base of Pant Du (Black Mountain), Laurence set up his four colonies at the end of his garden. At this point it was still very much a hobby!
These four colonies grew quite quickly as Laurence tends not to do things by halves. After 12 months in North Wales, Laurence had 30 full size colonies in the back of his garden and a fair amount of honey was piling up in buckets.
It was too much to give away to friends and family and people began asking if they could buy it. At this point in 2016, Laurence set up his company, initially called Hendre Foilen Honey (the name of his house) and he printed his own labels on a black and white printer.
When Laurence advertised this honey on Facebook, he was surprised just how fast it sold and saw an opportunity to further expand his business based upon the principle of more bees equals more honey, which in turn leads to more bees and even more honey.
This wild expansion continued for the next 2 years and by that time Laurence had reached over 250 colonies and moved them away from his back garden (to the delight of his neighbours) to local farm and woodland in Flintshire.
Laurence spent all the money he had accumulated from honey sales on reinvestment back into the business. He fully kitted out a purpose built honey extraction facility using state of the art stainless steel equipment – which achieved a 5 star hygiene rating upon its first inspection (and subsequent inspections).
Laurence’s ambition at this point was to reach 500 x colonies of bees and become a full time professional beekeeper. However, following his first full summer trying to juggle Hendre Foilen Honey alongside his full time occupation in the construction industry, Laurence realised his ambitions were not sustainable in either the short or long term. He decided to downsize his operation and focus on building a website to market his honey directly to the public.
Laurence decided at this point to rebrand the company to enhance the appeal of the honey across the UK.
He then realised he should probably get some support with the rebrand and got a professional graphic design company onboard. He did this with the assistance of the Welsh Honey Cluster who provided support to rebrand the company.
Laurence and Helen thought long and hard about a new name, finally settling on Black Mountain Honey, the location of where Laurence set up the first out apiary in North Wales.
At this point, Laurence had a brainwave. He came home one day from work and said to Helen – “I am going to start an educational YouTube channel for Black Mountain Honey”. Helen replied – “why? You can’t sell honey to beekeepers?”
She made a very valid point, but Laurence, keen to have a creative outlet, stubbornly continued with the creation of his YouTube channel.
Laurence started to produce simple, educational videos on how to keep bees, documenting the various processes and manipulations involved. These proved to be popular, and people commented positively on Laurence’s no-nonsense approach to beekeeping.
In May 2020, the doorbell rang at Hendre Foilen, and Laurence answered the door to a slightly startled postman. He was delivering 50 x F1 Buckfast queens that Laurence has ordered over the winter and completely forgotten about.
Not having the resources to create the splits at this point, Laurence spoke to the supplier of the queens and asked if he minded Laurence selling them via social media. The supplier (Murray McGregor) had no issue with this, and Laurence set to work creating posts and videos for social media.
The queens sold out in 12 hours, and Laurence immediately saw the opportunity to expand Black Mountain Honey into the queen-selling business.
Laurence set to work sourcing a reputable, reliable and above all else, quality supplier of F1 Buckfast Queens. He had bought queens previously from Malta and was impressed by the honey production capabilities but more importantly the temperament of the queens.
Laurence approached Melita Bees and suggested a proposal to import queen bees for sale within the UK. This relationship although starting small, quickly blossomed into a long term strategic partnership to supply the UK with top quality, calm, F1 Buckfast queens from Malta. You can read more about Melita Bees here.
Alongside the development of the queens supply business, Laurence was noticing an increasing trend in the demand for nucleus colonies. Laurence began by selling 10-20 nucleus colonies a year and he received fantastic feedback from his customers stating just how calm his bees were to work with. Laurence decided to expand this area of his business with the help of his long term mentor, Richard Stevens.
Richard is a third-generation bee farmer with over 30 years of experience in the industry. Together, they set up a number of dedicated nucleus apiaries in England and Wales to produce nucleus colonies for sale in the spring. In 2021, they sold over 100 colonies. In 2022, they sold 250 colonies, and in 2023, they sold over 400 nucleus colonies to many happy customers across the UK.
Richard and Laurence’s aim in the nucleus business is clear – to produce the calmest and most gentle colonies of bees as practically possible. They do this by purchasing artificially inseminated breeder queens from the best breeders in Europe. They use the larvae produced by these pure breeder queens to graft queen cells that are naturally mated on the wing in the UK, in areas that are flooded with drones of superior temperament. The result is an extremely gentle colony of bees that produce a significant honey harvest and show little signs of aggression towards humans.
With the focus now on queens and nucleus colonies, Laurence has been able to downsize the honey production part of the business to fulfil the demands of the website and a few local shops. He also supplies wholesale honey through Blas ar Fwyd, a wholesaler which services local food and drink outlets in Wales. He now keeps around 70-100 production colonies across local farmland and woodland in Flintshire.
Moving on to 2024, the vision of the company is clear and split into 3 separate operating businesses. The honey production, packing and retail business focusses on supplying and producing, pure unpasteurised honey to customers throughout the UK, via our website and selected distributors. The queens business delivers a dedicated next day delivery service for F1 Buckfast queens, supplying superior genetics for backyard beekeepers and bee farmers. The nucleus business focusses on supplying the calmest honey bees it is possible to produce by utilising superior breeding genetics and over three generations of beekeeping experience.
All of the above are bound together by Laurence’s fast growing YouTube channel which has reached over 34,000 subscribers. Laurence’s continues to produce educational beekeeping content which provides value to customers in all three of his operating businesses.
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