First delivery of Le Cordon Bleu London honey!

Le Cordon Bleu London is celebrating National Honey Week in style, with the unveiling of our very own honey, made by the bees on our beautiful rooftop garden!

For National Honey Week, we're celebrating all things honey and highlighting the vital role that the honey bee plays in our environment. And there couldn’t be any better way for Le Cordon Bleu London to celebrate, other than the unveiling of our very own honey, produced by the bees on our beautiful rooftop garden, which is now available to purchase at Café Le Cordon Bleu.

Le Cordon Bleu London are a part of The Urban Bee Project with InMidtown, having given a hive a home on our rooftop garden last year. Since then our bees have really flourished, which is not surprising given the extensive choice of flowering plants that are available around our world-renowned school on Bloomsbury square! Following the process of our honey from production through to the final product has been such an exciting journey, and something that we just had to share.

Honey is made from the nectar of flowering plants. The nectar is naturally broken down by the bees into simple sugars and stored in honeycombs within the beehive, before the excess honey is removed by the beekeeper. The beekeeper then scrapes off the wax cap (which is made by the bees to seal off honey in each cell of the honeycomb), and then places the cap-free honeycomb into an extractor so all of the lovely honey can be collected. The honey is then strained, bottled or jarred, and then distributed.

With the beehive on our rooftop garden being positioned right next to our rosemary plants, from which the bees had been foraging, Le Cordon Bleu London’s honey has a really floral taste with a hint of rosemary! Our Chefs cannot wait to get their hands on a jar so that they can create delicious recipes that make use of this luxurious ingredient.

The honeybees on our rooftop garden also play a critical role in the maintenance of our plants as they are pollinating insects, and a real asset to our gardener, Sean from InMidtown. The bees transfer pollen from the male parts of the flowers to the female parts resulting in fertilization, and the production of seeds!

Honeybees play such an important role in our environment and our way of life, but are too often overlooked. Hopefully Le Cordon Bleu London have helped to shed some light on how amazing these flying insects really are by showcasing the beautiful honey that they have produced for us.

Don’t forget to visit Café Le Cordon Bleu to purchase your pot of this unique honey for only £1.80, and make sure you check back soon to see what delicious recipes our Chefs will be creating with this brand new ingredient!