For years, I’ve wanted to know more about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s Montecito home and their extensive property. I’ve seen the “before” photos from when they first bought their home, but we’ve also heard that they did some renovations and they redid their gardens too. Chef Alice Waters appears on With Love, Meghan, and Waters spoke about visiting Meghan’s gardens, saying that: “It’s substantial in terms of biodiversity. She has a whole herb garden, corn, every colour of tomato, cherry tomatoes and larger ones, beautiful purple radicchio, and all kind of fruit trees, orange and citrus. It was very impressive. She grows potatoes and carrots – we ate some of her carrots right there in the garden.” Meghan has also added chicken coops on the property and who knows how many chickens she has at this point, but there’s no egg shortage at the Casa de Sussex. But did you know that she also has beehives?
The Duchess of Sussex is so immersed in her swarms of bees that she has bought special masked bee-keeping suits for five-year-old Prince Archie and three-year-old Princess Lilibet, her master beekeeper has revealed. Branden Aroyan, who set up Meghan’s hives and works with her monthly to maintain the colony and gather honey, reports that she becomes like a ‘giddy teenager’ when surrounded by the 100,000 bees she keeps in her Montecito garden.
‘Meghan has a couple of hives and she loves them,’ Aroyan, 50, tells MailOnline. ‘She’s giggling. She’s just like, “Wow, that’s so amazing! Look at them! Oh my gosh, look at all those bees walking around, crawling around! This one has orange pollen in its pocket! Oh that one has yellow! Look how big this one is! What are these guys doing?” Just asking questions, and continuous “Wow!” The entire time she’s like a giddy teenager. Harry loves it, and Archie and Lilibet are into it too. It’s a whole family affair. They all have their own beekeeper suits. They’re just all super-fascinated by it.’
Meghan follows in a long line of Royal beekeepers. The late Queen Elizabeth had hives at Buckingham Palace, Clarence House, Windsor Castle and Sandringham. King Charles maintains those hives, and also has several at his Highgrove country estate in Gloucestershire. Beekeeping is understood to have been a long-time hobby of the Princess of Wales, who tends hives at her Norfolk country home Anmer Hall on the Sandringham Estate. Queen Camilla has also kept bees on her Ray Mill estate in Wiltshire since 2015.
Aroyan set up Meghan’s hives in 2023, and says Meghan has no fear of being stung.
‘She’s not at all nervous,’ he says. ‘In all our time together she’s never been stung. We take our time. She’s whispering. We’re not making loud noises, just moving slowly and surely. Just being kind to the bees, and they respond accordingly. ‘She’s fascinated by the bees, loves it and really cares for them. She is intrigued by the interconnectedness of the whole colony and how they take care of each other. There’s no ego and it’s all for the greater good and the health of the hive. She loves to plant flowers for them: perennials that bloom throughout the year, and a variety of salvias that the bees just love, and so do the butterflies and the hummingbirds. It’s a great way to fill the garden with wildlife and gives the bees what they need to prosper and pollinate.’
‘Listening to the buzz and hearing their hum is so calming, like yoga or deep meditation. After you hang out with them you walk away and all’s right with the world. She says that all the time. You show up, “Oooh! Ooh! Ooh!” And after it’s like, “Ahhh, thanks bees.”
Meghan plans to sell honey along with jams and preserves when she launches her new lifestyle brand, As Ever – until recently named American Riviera Orchard – as well as honey butter, honey sticks, honey pots, honey dippers and honey stirrers, according to her US trademark application. She relishes the honey gathered from her homegrown apiary, but it won’t produce enough of the sweet stuff to sell commercially. Meghan’s two hives might produce enough honey to fill only 64 8-oz jars each season.
‘We harvest the honey and I put it in jars for them,’ says Aroyan. ‘Each hive can produce a couple of gallons of honey. That’s why in the Netflix trailer, she says: “My golly, it’s so much honey.” Meghan will keep jars from previous seasons, and label them so she can compare the different flavours as the flowers really alter the taste. It’s wildflower honey, but some seasons it’s a little more citrusy. We do it together, but I’m basically helping her do it. She wants to save as many bees as possible. She wanted to know: “How many bees can we put on this property? Can we put more than one hive?” So she has two hives, with about 50,000 bees per hive in the garden.’
I’m reminded of two things – one, Princess Kate tried to convince everyone that she’s a beekeeper too, and she brought her “own” honey to an event one time in 2021. Soon after, Kate and William claimed that they keep chickens at Anmer Hall as well. Who is taking care of their bees and chickens in Norfolk when the family supposedly lives in Adelaide Cottage in Windsor? I still don’t know how all of that works.
The second thing I thought of was Angelina Jolie’s position as Godmother to the Women for Bees program, which teaches women around the world how to set up and maintain their own beehives, in the hopes of regenerating the declining bee population. I really wish Angelina and Meghan would eventually get together!
Photos courtesy of Netflix, Instagram.
