Back in 2019, Bentley installed a couple of bee hives at its factory in Crewe, England. The hives helped it look more ecologically friendly, and provided it with some honey, that it could hand out to customers. Now, five harvests later, it has introduced Black Edition honey.
At first, the automaker had just two hives on its property, and that number has now grown to a total of 17. The product of the newest 15 hives will continue to be labeled as standard Bentley Honey. However, the 500 jars it harvested from its two original hives will now be called Black Edition honey.
It’s not really clear that the honey is different in any way, after all, the bees harvesting from the same plants, but the special edition liquid does appear to be darker. To mark them as separate, Bentley’s design team also came up with special labeling.
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As you’d expect, the Black Edition honey gets a darker design, while the 1,000 bottles of regular honey get a white label. Both feature the same branding, which is rich in honeycomb shapes, and celebrates the fact that this is the automaker’s fifth harvest.
“Our colony of busy worker bees has proved more productive than ever at the Excellence Centre for Honey Production,” said Andreas Lehe, head of manufacturing at Bentley. “This exciting initiative shows the far-reaching nature of Bentley’s Beyond100 strategy, as we focus on making the Pyms Lane facility even more environmentally-friendly. It also matches the company’s aim of becoming leaders in sustainable luxury mobility.”
In all, the automaker employs more than 1 million bees across its 17 hives, which provide it with its 1,500 bottle harvest. And while I would normally be annoyed at Bentley for randomly putting a label on a product and calling it special, it isn’t actually selling these bottles, so it just feels fun.
“The delicious honey is very exclusive and we do not sell it, instead it is gifted at corporate events, customer visits and charitable causes along with Colleague Reward and Recognition schemes and competitions,” said Sebastian Benndorf, head of product planning. “We find it is an exciting way to get people talking about the importance of ecology and the role pollinators play.”
