Creating a Buzz on Campus
3 June 2011
A group of visitors created quite a buzz at Imperial this week, when the South Kensington campus took delivery of its first beehive, and nearly 3,000 new housemates.
Located in the Environmental Society Garden behind Ethos, a nucleus colony of Carniolan bees, including a Queen, drones and workers, were introduced to the hive, having been carefully driven from Gloucester to South Kensington. “Moving in Day” was overseen by bee-enthusiasts Bill Davidson and Anthony Mason, from Gavin Jones, the company that maintains the College grounds.
Describing how the bees will go about settling in to their new surroundings, Bill said: “The Queen will control the colony and will start egg laying in about a week, with a continual succession of eggs, grubs and hatching going on to take the nucleus to a full-sized colony. Throughout this the worker bees will be gathering pollen and nectar, with all the workers being replaced on a continuous 6 week-cycle.”
Bill will continue to have a hands-on role whilst students Stefan Piatek and Reuben Gibbons from the Imperial College Environmental Society get to grips with the new arrivals and attend a bee-keeping course over the summer.
Bees are the most important pollinating insects for food production, and have an estimated yearly worth of about £200 million to British agriculture. In recent years, UK populations have declined by around a third, with possible causes including climate change, use of pesticides and disease.
Daniella McManamon, Project Assistant in Facilities and Property Management which is funding the bee-keeping project, explained that it is part of the College’s wider Step Change campaign to promote green initiatives and reduce Imperial’s carbon footprint:
We hope this sparks off other sustainability ideas for staff and students.
“A lot of Step Change initiatives are large-scale projects that operate at a College level, and we were looking at ways for students to get more involved. Keeping bees allows us to combat a pressing environmental problem and raise awareness of wider green issues at the same time. We hope this sparks off other sustainability ideas for staff and students.”
The first batch of South Kensington Imperial honey should be ready for taste-testing next summer.
Read Stefan and Reuben’s blog and follow their bee-keeping experiences
View the slideshow below to see the bees move in to their new home
Tags: Ethos, Step Change
Posted in College, Students | 3 Comments »
3 Responses to “Creating a Buzz on Campus”
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Hannah says:
For more information about the environmental society’s activities you can follow us on facebook here http://www.facebook.com/ic.esoc as well as looking at our blog (featured in the article) at http://www.union.ic.ac.uk/scc/esoc.
Feel free to contact us if you would like to visit the bees!
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Ioannis Antonas says:
September 2nd, 2011 at 11:49 am
I am a PhD graduate from Imperial College and live in Bournemouth. At present I am involved in the Carbon Capture Project with the Chem Eng Dept and come to the college couple times a week. I am a bee keeper with 12 years experience. Do you think I can be of help?
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Simon Watts says:
September 2nd, 2011 at 12:06 pm
Hi Ioannis. You could get in touch with Stefan, Hannah and Reuben at the Environmental Society – they are looking after the hives. Email esoc@imperial.ac.uk.
