- Record production forecast from the Bee Apiary in Goodwood, West Sussex, otherwise famous as the birthplace as the Phantoms, the Wraiths, the Cullinans & more.
- The facility has a total of six hives & houses around a quarter of a million of rare English Honey Bees.
- The Goodwood Apiary was established in 2017, has six traditional wooden beehives & over 2,000 humans plus over 2,50,000 bees work here.
- Even though the facility is technically spread over 42 acres of Rolls Royce owned land, the bees however conduct their pollinating-missions across wide geographies, including the South Downs National Park.
- Bee conservation has wider environmental impacts than what can be seen on the surface. Bees are pollinator-species, in simple math, no bees, no pollination, no plant life. For more context, watch Dreamworks‘ Bee Movie.
The bees are responsible for producing a rare and desirable flavour of honey. At the end of each season, “The Rolls-Royce of Honey” is meticulously hand‑processed by local specialists and served to guests of the marque, including customers commissioning their motor cars in the company’s Atelier suite. In fact, the English-crafted, wooden beehives, bear a polished stainless steel nameplate handcrafted in the company’s Bespoke Workshop. Five are named after cars in the Rolls-Royce product family – ‘Phantom’, ‘Wraith’, ‘Ghost’, ‘Dawn’ and ‘Cullinan’ – while the sixth, the ‘Spirit of Ecstasy’, celebrates the marque’s illustrious mascot.
According to the makers of the world’s most luxurious car brand, the Apiary project is Rolls-Royce Motor Cars’ response to the real and present threat facing Britain’s Honey Bee population. Honey Bees are the principal pollinators of numerous tree and plant species, including many of the fruit and vegetable crops that are crucial to the local agricultural economy around the Home of Rolls-Royce. However, a shortage of suitable forage, primarily caused by habitat loss, has put their numbers under great and growing pressure in recent years. Through providential timing, the creation of the Apiary gave an early boost to a new South Downs National Park Trust campaign to address this critical problem. The Bee Lines initiative supports farmers and landowners in creating new flower-rich ‘corridors’ to link areas of habitat and help bees and other pollinator species to thrive. Residents and businesses within the National Park boundaries are also being encouraged to get involved through initiatives such as planting wildflowers in gardens and grounds.
In the words of Richard Carter who is the Director of Global Communications at Rolls Royce Motor Cars, “Our sustainable buildings, thermal ponds, rainwater management systems and wildfowl refuge have already made the Home of Rolls-Royce at Goodwood one of the UK’s most eco-friendly manufacturing facilities. Through this project, which taps into the biodiversity of our site, including our huge living roof, we’re making an important contribution to conserving Britain’s vital bee population.”
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