BeePoC

BeePoC is a group of aspiring people of color beekeepers in the UK that aims to learn from the ways of bees for collectives, communities and social movements. BeePoC is organized collectively through the offering of individuals gentle creative practices that assist their beekeeping sessions and bee-centered workshops. Such workshops include meditations, reflection sessions, balm making, zine making, honey jarring, pollinator herbalism talks, batik art using beeswax and jewelry molding. Beekeeping has many barriers for people of colour in the UK despite beekeeping being a global practice for many cultures around the world that some people of colour in the UK feel connected to.

BeePoC have developed a beekeeping practice that resonates with people of colour experiences in the environmental sector as well as connected to their heritage, community and cultural practices. BeePoC, aspires to conduct beekeeping whilst learning from honeybees, as pollinators in an ecosystem and as non-human teachers about community building. BeePoC welcomes the practice of slow and reflective learning, and holistic (low-extraction, no chemicals) beekeeping practices, that respects honeybees as incredible creatures first and foremost, before honey-makers. BeePoC organically decolonises beekeeping practice, by forming kinship with the bees and questioning methods that consider honeybees as creatures for extraction ahead of ecosystem agents with knowledge for our times of ecological, social and climate injustice. Through open days, BeePoC would also like to organise workshops that open up the knowledge and ways of honeybees as social organisers to climate justice organisers and people of colour-led/centered collectives that work on community building. 

BeePoC currently assists with the maintenance of honey beehives at Hackney City Farm, London UK. In 2023, BeePoC, emerged at Hackney City Farm through a person of colour beekeeper, Serayna Keya Solanki, who learnt beekeeping at Hackney City Farm for two years prior to the set up of the group. Throughout Summer 2023, the community group met weekly to assist with beekeeping practices and maintenance of beehives. Emergently, a collective formed through individuals contributing skills and offerings to the group. 

In 2023, BeePoC was able to meet weekly for 10 weeks, supporting over 15 people throughout the beekeeping season. The group has spent time building a group ethos that reflects an in-person community group that values knowledge sharing and creative community building. [Note: The group does not aspire to have social media visibility, to support some mental health requirements of the group]. Working with herbalists and horticulturists within the group, and as part of the Hackney City Farm network, they also produced 200+ herbal wax balms that were distributed within their communities.  

Some attendees have reported that the project in 2023 has empowered them to be more confident in the environmental sector by giving people the space and agency to explore variations and meanings of an environmental practice whilst learning from each other in the group and being able to explore/apply their creativity, as well as integrate their knowledge from connected expertise (conservation (plants, invertebrates, carnivorous plants and many more), food growing, horticulture, herbalism, arts & crafts, community building, climate & social justice).