Growing Community Shares Bee Care Tips After Fostering Hives for Three Years

 

Nourish Community, a community based not-for-profit organic food garden just outside of Bournemouth, is celebrating three years of hosting beehives on its land and supporting Dorset’s precious honeybees.

The idyllic growing space in West Parley is managed by twin brothers Nick and Rich Stone. The duo started growing after seeing how our food supply was affected during Covid as Rich explains, “We witnessed first-hand how our food system came under major threat and how it was almost brought to its knees during the uncertain times of 2020.

“With all the fear and conflicting views going on around the world, we were both inspired and motivated to start growing our own food. Not just for us and our families, we also wanted to do what we could to support our friends and those that had come under hard times.”

Nourish Community was later founded and set up two summers later to help support the wider community and also to help establish, protect and grow a stronger more resilient food system.

The brothers’ aim was to build and establish a self-sustaining and ethical business model that supported everyone involved; from the food growers and distributors through to the foodbanks, shops, restaurants, individuals, and families within the community that needed an extra helping hand.

“As time went on, our food growing journey naturally evolved where we discovered and adopted a number of more sustainable food growing practices” explains Rich “And this is how we found out about the bees.”

Through their shared local sustainable food network, Rich and Nick met Michael French of Grounded Community in Boscombe. Rich continues, “I’d been thinking about getting bees as soon as I realised how important they were for plants, but I had no idea where to start.

“I was talking to Michael at Grounded about all this and he told me about Amy Foster and this new charity called Bee Mission who wanted to install 500 new hives across Dorset and Hampshire. They’d do all the hard work and we just needed to provide the land, it sounded perfect and he put us in touch.”

Amy Foster, Director at Bee Mission 500, adds, “Nourish Community were home to Bee Mission’s first foster hives. It was all very new to us then. We installed two here on this little island. It such a perfect spot with plenty of countryside and the river not too far away with lots of wildflowers for them which they love.”

Rich recalls, “That first year they were here, that first summer, the garden was literally buzzing. Buzzing when you walked around, it was incredible. I absolutely loved it. All I did was take photos of bees buzzing around the flowers.

“The next year wasn’t as good, it was a tough year weather-wise for the bees and we also had some issues with new nearby housing developments using weed killer. The problem with weed killer is that it doesn’t just kill the bee that interacts with the poison, but the bee dies before going back to the hive so it can’t tell the rest of the colony. So, the bees keep going out to the pesticide covered areas and dying, it’s heartbreaking.

“Luckily, I managed to get them to stop spraying near us, but there’ll still be plenty sprayed elsewhere. It’s great that farms aren’t allowed to use bee-killing pesticides anymore, but we really need to ensure that councils and housing developers, in fact no one, can use bee-killing anything. If the bees die, so do we, it’s that simple.”

“Instead of killing these precious bees, we need try and encourage people to grow more flowery bushes, trees and flowers, all sorts of flowers, and a range of them so there’s some in bloom from early spring through to late autumn so the bees don’t go hungry.

“I feel that it’s our job now to explain to people how important the bees are and to help everyone that can, cultivate bee friendly gardens. Not only for honeybees, but for the wild pollinators too.

“We’ve learned so much over the last three years about bees, pollinators, and how human interference and poor weather affects them. What we know above all is that bees and pollinators need all our help to survive. And we’re going to do everything we can to help them help us.”

(Amy and Rich)

 

Bee Mission 500 have now installed 63 hives across the south of England and are always on the lookout for new locations. If you have a big garden, some land, a flat roof, or any area you think might be suitable, please get in touch with Amy – aka Aunty Bee – via auntybee@beemission.co.uk and Amy will organise a visit from one of Bee Mission’s beekeepers.

Find out more about Nourish Community as well as upcoming events and workshops via https://www.nourishcommunity.co.uk/