National Don't Step on a Bee Day

Sustainability is at the heart of everything we do; we grow over 25% of the ingredients used in our award-winning gins and are self-sufficient in several botanicals already, having planted over 5,700 so far. We’ve helped to plant over 5 acres of wildflower meadows, gifted over 100,000 wildflower seeds, planted over 750 trees at the farm in the last year and currently care for approximately 1.2 million honeybees at Falls Farm.

At Warner's, we rely on a healthy countryside to provide the best foraged botanicals and water quality to use in every distillation, so we aim to give back to wildlife and the countryside around us. We champion those habitats and species that need our help, where declines have been seen, by supporting charities and habitat management that endeavour to improve the outlook for wildlife that calls Britain our home. People are very much part of the solution - that means all of us! We can all make a difference, no matter how small.

We have seen a significant decline in pollinators over the last 50 years and there will be negative impacts on our food security if we do nothing to slow or reverse this trend. This is why we launched our Honeybee gin in 2017; a celebration of the vital role our pollinators have in providing us with the food and drink we put on our tables. Every bottle of our Warners Honeybee Gin comes with a packet of Wildflower seeds for you to plant at home and, in partnership with the Royal Horticultural Society, we’ve been able to support many fantastic pollinator habitat initiatives and projects, provided educational support and are incredibly proud to have won the Stakeholder Engagement Award at the 2019 Footprint Drinks Sustainability Awards for our work.

In support of Don't Step on a Bee Day, we have included some ways that we can all help our bees:

• Plant wildflower seeds – Wildflower seeds provide forage for Honeybees, Bumble Bees and Solitary Bees. Did you know we have lost 97% of our flower rich meadows in the last 100 years?
• Build a bee hotel/bumblebee home - many bees look for suitable nesting tubes for rearing brood. We can help by providing more nesting places by creating a home for nature, thereby improving the success rates of our pollinator reproduction, and a bee hotel is the perfect place! An alternative to a bee hotel is a bumblebee home, watch the video below to view an easy guide to making your own at home in your garden.
• Leave a water source for bees - during the summer, bees (and other wildlife) will be grateful for any water sources available to keep them hydrated, damp ground or sloping gravel into water provides a great opportunity to have a drink without drowning.
• Did you know that the majority of the honey in the UK is imported? Support your local beekeepers by purchasing honey from your local farm shop or deli.
• Don't step on a bee - not all bees sting you know! Did you know that solitary bees are the only bees that you can legally keep on allotments because they don't sting and are excellent pollinators?