The Regent’s Park Beekeeper Britain meets...
Located in the heart of central London and bordered by bustling Camden and stylish Marylebone, Regent’s Park might be the last place you would expect to find a beekeeper, but it is exactly where you will find Toby Mason
N
estled in a secret location within the capital’s most popular park and with the distant hum of traffic in the background, London’s ‘buzziest’ man goes about his his sticky
business – beekeeping. Creating a more determined hum, Toby Mason’s grist of bees labour away unsuspectingly creating some of Britain’s tastiest honey. London’s Regent’s Park is not the first place you might
expect to find a professional beekeeper and a collection of hives, home to a family of 40 colonies of hardworking bees. But it is the ideal place for bees to produce delicious honey. Known as the ‘jewel in the crown’, Regent’s Park is
London’s largest outdoor sports area, covering nearly 100 acres. Like most of the other Royal Parks, Regent’s Park formed part of the vast chase appropriated by Henry VIII. Marylebone Park, as it was then known, remained a
royal chase until 1646. It was John Nash, architect to the crown and friend of the Prince Regent, who developed Regent’s Park as we know it today. It remains a firm favourite of Londoners and visitors alike, and, today, is most famously associated with London Zoo. It is also home to a vast open parkland covered in wild flowers, and interspersed with formal, landscaped gardens. This diversity provides a wonderfully varied feeding
Above: Toby Mason at work in Regent's Park. Left: The pretty lake in Regent's Park. Right: A typical British hive surrounded by a wide variety of flowers
ground for Toby’s bees. “There is no greater park in the world – with its rare and unusual breeds, open and closed spaces, smart and scruffy bits, sporty and lazy bits. It is a wonderful home for bees because it has so many flowers and trees, and, like most city parks, it is pesticide free.” This variety means that the Regent’s Park bees typically
stay within a three-mile radius. And the combination of plants and trees within that radius results in very tasty honey. City honey, says Tony, has more flavour than many countryside-produced blends: “Here in the Capital, the bees have a phenomenal amount of food: trees, brambles and wild flowers. There are fewer wild flowers in the countryside, as they are often ‘sprayed’ by farmers. So, city-based beekeepers tend to harvest better-tasting honey.” This could be true, as farmers favour monocropping.
And although monocropping makes for a beautiful British countryside... (imagine bright yellow rapeseed fields unfolding across an undulating landscape for as far as your eye can see) it also makes for bland honey. Not only is the honey tastier, Toby believes that the yields
in the city are higher too, because the bees do not have to travel too far to find food. “There are more than eight
50 BRITAIN
www.britain-magazine.com
PHOTOS: COURTESY PURE FOOD/ISTOCKPHOTO/GARDEN COLLECTION, DEREK HARRIS
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