Foragers Fortune is a husband-and-wife team, Steve and Zoe Oke. Zoe comes from a farming family and has always been a keen gardener, forager, and nature lover. A chance encounter with a local beekeeper in 2019 led to a year of mentorship, after which Zoe acquired her first two hives in 2020. Since then, bees, beekeeping, and everything associated with it have quickly taken over our lives—from family swarm-catching trips to the annual honey harvest, where everyone has a role!
Meanwhile, Steve developed a passion for mead-making, using locally foraged flowers, fruits, and our own honey to create a variety of meads (honey wine). These meads are not only delicious but also award-winning, having won mead categories at both the Royal Cornwall Show and the Callington Honey Fair in recent years.
We currently maintain approximately 20 hives, located in four different spots around the Tamar Valley. We harvest honey twice a year, producing a spring crop in late May and a summer crop in August (weather permitting). Our honey is batched by site, as the forage differs across the four locations. This results in honey with distinct flavours, allowing us to appreciate what the bees have been foraging on.
At the end of the summer, as the bees begin to slow down and prepare for winter, we stay busy filtering and processing the beeswax collected throughout the year. The cleaning and filtering process is time-consuming, but the result is the most beautiful, pure beeswax, which we then use to make candles and luminaries.
In 2022, we started making beeswax candles, which quickly became popular locally. However, we realised that candles aren’t for everyone, so we set out to create an alternative that would bring the beauty of beeswax to a wider audience. The result is our range of beautiful luminaries, which can be enjoyed with either a traditional beeswax night light or an LED alternative, allowing them to be safely enjoyed in any home.
Launching Foragers Fortune in 2024 has given us the opportunity to bring our handcrafted beeswax products to a broader audience and marks a significant step in our journey. We have many exciting plans for the future, and we look forward to sharing them with you.