BEES' KNEES

Alison Hughes explores the ingenious tradition of France’smurs à abeilles, an ancient practice for modern times

- Alison Hughes

Halfway between Saint-Lô and Villedieu-les-Poêles in the Manche département of Normandy lies the small village of TessyBocage. The landscape here has not always been so tranquil. Its mixture of fields, hedgerows and small copses provided much-needed cover for the Allied troops after the D-day landings, and Saint-Lô was one of the towns which was almost completely destroyed by bombing raids.

Thankfully, nowadays the bocage has returned to its former serenity with environmentalists actively campaigning to preserve its biodiversity. And it is here in Tessy-Bocage that a remarkable project has been undertaken – the restoration of un mur à abeilles. Not literally a wall of bees, but a wall of beehives. These walls date back to another historical period, to medieval times, when honey was the main source of sugar. In the 17th and 18th centuries, many of them fell into disuse due to the influx of sugar cane from the American colonies. However, when Napoleon banned all English imports during the Napoleonic wars, people returned to their former sweetener.