What is the business?
Thorne are the leading manufacturer and retailer of beekeeping equipment in the UK and are renowned throughout the world for the quality of the beehives they produce.
History:
Thorne have been making beekeeping equipment in Lincolnshire for over 100 years. Founded in 1913, the fourth-generation family firm now supports hundreds of local people and more than 50,000 beekeepers. They employ over 90 people at five locations around the country, the majority being at Rand near Wragby, where they run a 31-acre site.
How did LORIC help?
Paul Smith, the current MD, began a print publication called the “Beekeepers News” in 1978, which ran for 100 editions until September 2003. Thorne were keen to preserve this valuable company archive and to make the beekeeping articles in the newsletters available to a wider audience. LORIC helped by using their Atiz BookDrive Scanner to digitise all 100 editions, plus some old company photos.
Plans for the future:
The Beekeepers News is an invaluable resource, and documents how beekeeping has changed over the last 45 years, and indeed how practices have stayed the same. EH Thorne are already using articles from the digital version in their current e-newsletter and have plans to commercialise the product in the future.
Contact
As soon as we made aware of the LORIC project we were incredibly excited and could see a future for this invaluable resource. Kay and her team were incredibly obliging and treated the documents with care and respect (even learning a little about beekeeping in the process!)
EH Thorne Beehives