As this is an historic site, bookings details have been removed. You can however, contact Kev using the email address info AT the-beehive-pub DOT co DOT uk We would love to hear from you if you were one of our many great customers from our time at The Beehive. Feel free to share any memories or photos you may have! Sadly, a few of the pubs former customers are no longer with us and looking through the gallery pages can bring back some bittersweet memories especially when remembering so many of the characters that used to frequent the pub during our time there. If you are browsing this website and wondering why I have republished it after all these years, I was walking along Cannerby Lane recently and was asked if I remembered what the pub was like before it was a Co-op! Quite a coincidence this stranger should ask a former landlord… On a personal note, I am happy to see the Co-op doing well in the building. The store still retains the pub frontage which is nice. Some history. My understanding is the pub was built and first operated by Bullards Brewery. At some point it passed in to the ownership of Scottish & Newcastle then their subsidiary company, Phoenix Inns. Greene King bought it as part of a small package of pubs with the original intention of running it as a managed site under the Hungry Horse brand. After a year or so of being run by temporary managers Jack and Pat, our BDM was advised the site would become available as a tenancy and we were offered first refusal. We moved in on the 31st January 2000 paying £11,162 for the pub inventory and £1446 for the stock. The initial rent was around £150 a week rising to £275 a week once the refurbishment work was completed in the public bar. As part of the deal, we were responsible for purchasing new furniture for the bar and installing the new trade kitchen and new gas supply. Greene King looked after the external signage, lighting and paint job, turning the crumbling white walls in to a rather bright terracotta pink! Although Greene King wanted to knock through the two bars as part of the 2000 refurbishment, we refused and insisted the pub stayed as two bars keeping the traditional public bar and lounge layout. It worked better for our style of operation as a food pub and bar. Within the first few months of trading, the bar had become quite busy and the food offering really took off - all credit to Sarah’s cooking skills and menu offering. Whilst the pub was thriving, personal reasons gave call for us to sell the tenancy in 2002. The inventory as revalued at £22,100 (no vat as it was a tenant to tenant sale), Howard Lewsey of Corby & Son Licensed Trade Valuers had seen us in to the pub and also saw the next tenants, Alan and Marion Thompson in on the 20th March 2002. Alan & Marion traded for around a year and during their tenure, the pub was converted from two bars to one large open plan bar complete with the addition of a new disabled persons toilet. After Alan & Marion, a temporary holding couple took charge for a few months whilst Greene King found new, permanent operators. Marcus and Moya Nunn followed on, very successfully trading the pub as a sports bar. The day Marcus and Moya moved in, I received a call from Howard Lewsey of Corby & Son Licensed Trade Valuers to ask if I would visit the pub to reprogram the EPOS systems on site. I was happy to do this and for the first time in a year or so, stepped back through the doors of my old pub. There had been a small amount of confusion surrounding who was moving in to the pub that day and it was quite funny to see the looks on my old regulars faces when they walked in and found me stood behind the bar! Anyhow, tills reprogrammed and a long lasting friendship was struck up between Marcus, Moya and myself. I am told that is quite an unusual thing to happen between previous and current pub tenants. In May of 2010, Tom Ball of B.T. Ross & Co. Ltd, a Licensed Trade Valuer from Bedford saw Marcus and Moya out of their tenancy. After that, the pub had several tenants and holding managers in quite a quick succession. Greene King did temporarily plan to convert the pub to one of their Meet and Eat franchises during 2011 but that plan was shelved in 2012 when the pub closed again during the March of that year. During 2013, Greene King decided to place the freehold of the pub for sale with Norwich commercial property agents Roche. This became common knowledge in the area during the first week of January of 2014. A sturdy effort was made to keep The Beehive as a pub with several of the regulars holding meetings with local Councilors but Greene King permanently closed the pub on the 16th January 2014 and that was the end of The Beehive as a pub. The building was sold to the East of England Co-op group. By the time the pub was closed and sold, the pub was a very tired, under invested shabby shadow of what it had been. I was involved in a few of the change overs as, when I left the pub in 2002 I had established a business called Reedsafe. Reedsafe specialised in testing electrical appliances listed and sold as part of a pub inventory. As well as operating Reedsafe, I had also started working as a freelance Licensed Trade Change Clerk handling tenancy / operator transfers across a wide variety of pub and brewery estates. Many factors could have been to blame for the pubs demise but the smoking ban, rising utility bills and rates, ever increasing staff costs and the recession certainly did not help so The Beehive joined the likes of The George & Dragon, Mill Tavern and Duke of Norfolk which have all ceased trading and the buildings used for alternate use. A sad sign of the times.