I was once in Dean & DeLuca in New York and saw a little chocolate cake decorated with sugar bees. Having gone through a Biedermeier period earlier on in my life, I have something of a weakness for bees, and have wondered for years how I could incorporate them in a cake of my own: this is it. It seemed only right, to make it a honey cake: beautiful, perfect, Napoleonic - though perhaps in a slightly Disneyfied way. You judge.