Topic: Bees

[Toadspawn]

This appeared on the BBC message board tonight.
Interesting approach by a local gardening group. I hope it works and the person is not attracted by the money. It can be expensive and hard work but usually rewarding. Our Association is just over the border in S E Wales.

Bees have been much in the news recently. Having noticed the diminishing number of bees and the effect of this on our gardens members of the Brockweir, Hewelsfield & St Briavels Garden Society decided at the Society’s AGM on Friday 28th November 2008 that they will make a grant of £300 to a person living within the Parishes of Hewelsfield and Brockweir and St Briavels who wishes to take up bee-keeping.
The grant is intended to fund the purchase of bees, hives and the necessary clothing and equipment to keep bees, and a basic bee-keeping course run by the Dean Forest Branch of the Gloucestershire Beekeepers’ Association. The society will help to find a site for the hives and already has the offer of one.
It is a condition of the grant the hives are kept within the two parishes. In this way all local gardeners will benefit from the grant.
By giving publicity to this we hope that other societies will follow suit and encourage beekeeping in their localities.

[Robert_Brenchley]

Good for them!

[hopalong]

That's good.

There are things we can do on our allotments without necessarily having hives. A public spirited couple on our allotment site have given over their plot to creating habitats and growing plants that will attract bees.  It's early days, but it seems to be working. They hope the bees will spread over the entire site in due course, for the benefit of us all. Some of the rest of us have followed suit by growing plants and flowers that we know bees like, in amongst the veg and fruit.

[mike.jones]

Absolutely fantastic, what a forward thinking group of people, but then they are Welsh! Any way of finding out how they get along?