A Manchester wellness brand with roots in three generations of family beekeeping has grown from near-collapse during COVID into a £9.4m business — after its founder turned down an offer from Dragon’s Den investor Peter Jones and chose to back himself instead.

Just Bee Honey, co-founded by Joe Harper and Andy, is named in the recent Sunday Times 100 fastest-growing private companies — a milestone that would have seemed improbable just a few years ago when the pandemic threatened to wipe out everything the pair had built.

Joe’s connection to bees runs deep. His grandfather kept bees in Northern Ireland, and his father maintained

hives while Joe was growing up in Lancashire. The irony is not lost on him. “I was scared of bees as a child because I got stung so many times, and for years I didn’t even like honey,” he admits. “Years later, Andy and I were working as accountants and dreaming about building something of our own. We loved the idea of a business around health and wellbeing, but we wanted it to feel simple and natural rather than clinical or complicated.”

In 2015, the pair launched a honey-sweetened drinks business using honey from Joe’s father’s hives, building in a mission to Save the Bees by including a free packet of wildflower seeds with every order. The business gained listings, media attention, and even a spot on BBC’s Dragons’ Den — where Peter Jones offered to back the entire venture. Joe declined.

“It was one of those moments that defines what kind of business you want to build,” says Joe. “We wanted to do it on our own terms.”

Almost everything they did was unconventional, and commercially, the drinks venture struggled. Then, in March 2020, COVID wiped out the business almost overnight.

Rather than shut down, Joe and Andy chose to reinvent. During the first lockdown — living together at the time — they began blending wellness honey products at home, working night shifts to keep pace with demand. Customers were seeking natural ways to support their immunity, and the pair created a lemon, ginger, vitamins and echinacea honey blend that became the foundation of a new brand.

“We had a choice: walk away or start again,” says Joe. “We started again.”

That decision has proved transformative. Just Bee Honey has grown into a £9.4m wellness business with more than 30 employees and over 450,000 customers. The brand has sold more than 4.5 million products and helped to plant over 400 million bee-friendly wildflowers since 2015. Revenue grew from £6.1m the previous year — growth that reflects both increasing consumer appetite for natural wellness and the strength of Just Bee’s product range, which now includes honey blends targeting sleep, immunity, energy and gut health.

Central to Just Bee’s offering is its use of acacia honey, sourced from beekeeper cooperatives in the mountainous regions of northern China — one of the world’s best environments for acacia flower production. The rare floral source is prized for its light, delicate flavour and natural tendency to stay runny, making it an ideal base for the brand’s vitamin and botanical blends. Every batch is fully traceable back to its originating beekeepers.

Joe is candid about the road to get here. “The first five years were really five years of learning what doesn’t work before finally finding what did,” he says. “Most wellness brands have forgotten pleasure. People don’t want to feel like they’re taking medicine. They want something that tastes good and makes them feel good. That’s what we set out to create.”

He is also clear-eyed about the consumer opportunity ahead. Just Bee has identified women over 55 as an underserved and commercially overlooked segment in the wellness market — one the brand is actively targeting through its product development and marketing.

Today, Just Bee sits at the intersection of supplements, functional food and wellness, at a moment when consumers are increasingly moving away from ultra-processed products and clinical-feeling supplements toward more natural, enjoyable formats. For Joe Harper, that shift feels personal — and generational.

“My grandfather kept bees. My dad kept bees. I was terrified of them as a kid,” he says. “Now I run a business built around them. I think that’s a pretty good story.”

Just Bee Honey products are available at www.justbeehoney.co.uk.