The team has been busy installing over 20 bee nests this past month. We advertised our need for more greenspaces, and the community has well and truly delivered! There’s now a wide range of wonderful bee-friendly sites that have kindly allowed us to install new bee nests. We’re delighted to welcome our new bee guardians at No Dig Community Allotment, Pearson Park Community Gardens, and Bishop Burton College. These are in addition to our seasoned guardians at Pickering Road Community Orchard and Thwaite Botanical Gardens in Cottingham.
This expansion means more bees and more larvae which are essential for our experiment this summer, which involves raising the larvae on different diets at different temperatures. The team will be monitoring the nests every other day and bringing any bee eggs back to hatch in the lab. This expansion is not only great for our experiments, but these bees are also incredibly efficient pollinators that should help our new guardian’s plants!
Our guardians have now all been provided with bee cocoons, which are contained within release boxes and carefully attached to the nest box. We are sure the bees will LOVE their new homes as each site has a variety of their favourite trees, wildflowers, and plenty of sunshine (when the British weather allows it!). Now we just need to wait for them to wake up!
