The Queen stamped the words “Queen Bee” onto a piece of paper and added it to an art installation at a beekeeping charity’s garden party.
Camilla attended the Bees For Development (BFD) event in sun-soaked Marlborough House in central London on Wednesday together with hundreds of guests, including Great British Bake Off judge Dame Prue Leith, celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and television presenter Kate Humble.
Wearing a green polka-dot dress with a glittery bee broche pinned to her belt, the Queen tasted honey and sampled beeswax body butter as she was shown around different exhibits by former MP Gyles Brandreth and BFD patron Martha Kearney.
Trying Indian honey, Camilla said she could taste a hint of marmalade and that it was “very good”.
Pratim Roy, a representative of Keystone Foundation India who have been partners with BFD for 30 years, told the PA news agency that Camilla had asked to try it.
“She was very interested to taste bitter honey,” he said.
“She enjoyed it and she wanted to know the species, how it becomes bitter.”
Camilla went on to use beeswax body butter, produced in Trinidad and Tobago, on her hands.
“Highly recommend,” she quipped afterwards.
While viewing an array of colourful art postcards – some of which were created by actress Emma Thompson and artists Charlie Mackesy and Grayson Perry – Camilla compared bee hives with Dame Prue.
“We compared our bee hives,” Dame Prue told PA.
“I had to confess that one of mine blew over and the queen bee had got such a shock she decided to lay only male eggs.”
She added: “I do feel that Her Majesty is tremendously good.
“I have met her three other times, always at charity events.
“Nearly always about children or food charities.
“I think she’s wonderful.”
Camilla stamped the words Queen Bee onto a yellow-and-black piece of paper to add to artist Leonie Bradley’s installation before it was auctioned off.
Moving to speak to another artist, Camilla erased a pencilled bee from a drawing by Frances Gynn whose Erasure installation aims to draw attention to the loss of the insects worldwide.
“She thought it was a powerful way of putting across the endangered species,” Ms Gynn told PA.
“She said ‘I don’t know if I can’ but she did.”
Camilla greeted nine-month-old Ota Rowan Zika who was sporting a bee costume that his mother made, eliciting coos from those around her at the end of her visit.
She became president of BFD in 2020 as the then-Duchess of Cornwall.
The garden party aimed to highlight the work of the charity which helps people around the world to become self-sufficient through beekeeping – working to alleviate poverty and protect bees.
BFD works particularly with women and girls, people with disabilities and minority, indigenous people.
Celebrating its 30th anniversary year, the charity has worked in more than 50 nations undertaking beekeeping development initiatives on behalf of organisations from the United Nations and the World Bank to national and local initiatives including in Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
