Honey Bee - Honey Lane, London, UK - Insect Sculptures on Waymarking.com

The British History website (visit link) advises that:
"North out of Cheapside at No. 111 (P.O. Directory). In Cheap Ward.

Earliest mention : "Huni lane," 1198-1222 (D. and C. St. Paul's, Press A. Box 1, 543).

Other forms of name : "Hunylane," 1235 (Cal. Charter Rolls, I. 201-2). "Honilane," 1280-1 (Cal. L. Bk. A. p. 38). "Honylane," 1315-16 (Ct. H.W. I. 260). "Honey lane" (S. 273).

In former times the lane was more extensive than now, as it occupied the whole site of the Market (Strype, ed. 1720, I. iii. 50).

So called, Stow says, "not of sweetenes thereof, being very narrow and somewhat darke, but rather of often washing and sweeping, to keepe it cleane" (S. 273).

Kingsford suggests that the name was probably due to the sale of honey there, many of the other streets out of Cheapside being similarly named, as Milk Street, Wood Street (ed. Stow's Survey, II. 333).

In digging the foundation of the City of London School, Roman relics were found at a depth of 16 to 18 ft., also tiles, and pavement of an Anglo-Norman church, and coins of Ethelred (Arch. XXVII. 149)."

Further information about Honey Lane is given at this blog (visit link):
"This is the sort of thing that brightens my day every time I find it. It is the keystone of the arch through the Sun Life Assurance building in Cheapside, leading to Honey Lane. And it features a bee buzzing up to a basket of flowers and fruit.

The building was designed by Antony Lloyd and built in 1955. The main entrance is surrounded by signs of the zodiac carved by John Skeaping, but the keystone isn't mentioned in any of the reference books. It looks a bit formal and traditional for Skeaping so perhaps it was commissioned from a mason rather than a sculptor.

Honey Lane was the place where bee keepers lived in medieval London, but they seems to have departed by the 17th century when William Leybourn's survey showed 105 butcher's stalls in the market despite the fact that it was the smallest market in the capital. Was the city already too crowded and polluted for bees to live and work? This stone bee is certainly the only one you see round Honey Lane these days."

National Geographic (visit link) tells us this about the honey bee:
"Honeybee hives have long provided humans with honey and beeswax. Such commercial uses have spawned a large beekeeping industry, though many species still occur in the wild.

All honeybees are social and cooperative insects. A hive's inhabitants are generally divided into three types.

Workers are the only bees that most people ever see. These bees are females that are not sexually developed. Workers forage for food (pollen and nectar from flowers), build and protect the hive, clean, circulate air by beating their wings, and perform many other societal functions.

The queen's job is simple—laying the eggs that will spawn the hive's next generation of bees. There is usually only a single queen in a hive. If the queen dies, workers will create a new queen by feeding one of the worker females a special diet of a food called "royal jelly." This elixir enables the worker to develop into a fertile queen. Queens also regulate the hive's activities by producing chemicals that guide the behavior of the other bees.

Male bees are called drones—the third class of honeybee. Several hundred drones live in each hive during the spring and summer, but they are expelled for the winter months when the hive goes into a lean survival mode.

Bees live on stored honey and pollen all winter, and cluster into a ball to conserve warmth. Larvae are fed from the stores during this season and, by spring, the hive is swarming with a new generation of bees."