There’s a buzz about our office
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Along with energy, transport and food, we focus on nature as part of our mission to create a greener Britain. We’ve planted a wildflower area at our head office in Stroud, which provides a source of food for our local pollinators, and we’ve installed bee homes so there are ready-made places for shelter.
But with Britain’s bees in decline we’ve decided to go a step further and introduce more bees to the area. Trevor Saunders, our Head of Estates, has been helping Ecotricity to branch out into beekeeping recently. We chatted to him to get the buzz.
So Trevor, why beekeeping?
People have been talking about keeping bees on the roof of the office for a while now. We already do a number of things to help our existing pollinators, so this felt like the next step in helping ‘put the bee back in Britain’.
How did you start the beekeeping ball rolling?
We had to do a lot of research. Honey bees – the kind we would be keeping – are a fairly dominant species of bee, so we didn’t want them to threaten the other species of bee we’ve got around. But as we live in a relatively rural location, with a lot of pollen-bearing vegetation available, we should be able to introduce the new bees to the area without harming any other species.
But honey isn’t vegan, right?
No, but we’re not commercial beekeeping so we won’t be aiming to take honey. We’ll be following natural beekeeping practises. Once the hives are installed, we won’t be interfering much, aside from making sure that the bees are clean and healthy.
What’s happening next?
We’ve already held a beekeeping training day for a group of volunteers, and by spring next year we hope to have one or maybe two hives up on the roof of Lion House. We’ll look to involve more staff who are interested in beekeeping too, that way we’ll provide people with the necessary skills to take away and perhaps use in their local area.
It’s essential to reverse bee decline as they do so much amazing work. Cross-pollination helps at least 30% of the world’s crops to thrive and without bees, it would cost UK farmers alone £1.8 billion to pollinate their crops.
Our beekeeping initiative is another great way to give nature a helping hand. And you can help too, simply by using our unique green mobile phone service, Ecotalk. It’s powered by 100% green energy from the wind and sun and we use the money from customers’ bills to buy land to give back to nature. So each time you use your phone, you’ll be helping us ‘put the bee back in Britain’.
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