Whilst we were roaming around the recent Isle of Wight Festival we were drawn to a tent bearing the name ‘Give Bees a Chance’.
We’d heard that a couple of Bees were asking for a second chance that weekend, so we made our way into the tent to chat with the lovely Sam from Gift to Nature to find out more.
Sam told us that the Isle of Wight Festival are one of their Corporate members and with a little help from them, they’ve been able to kick start the Bee project.
So what is it all about you ask?
What’s it all about?
Well apparently, the honey and bumble bees are in serious decline. Gift to nature are hoping that through raising awareness of their plight, they’ll be able to raise much needed cash to carry out a study of the bees in the south of the Island.
They already have a bee expert in place, ready and waiting to do record where the bees are eating and living.
She told us that part of the decline of the honey bee is due to a virus. Once one honey bee picks up the virus, it takes it home and passes it onto the whole colony.
As you probably all know, bees are essential to agriculture, a big business on the Wight. In fact Wight Salads in particular, rely heavily upon them to pollinate their tomatoes.
It’s thought that the decline of the bumble bees is due to habitat loss, so to counter that Gift to Nature were handing out ‘bee wicks’.
This rather neat invention (as pictured) is made of organic hemp string and covered with red clover and something we couldn’t make head nor tail of (answers on a postcard please).
The idea is to plant the string in your garden now and by next spring you’ll have a great new bee breakfast bar of wild flowers! Sounds brill and we picked up a couple to add to the flora in our garden.
If you missed them at the Festival, be sure to look out for them at the Garlic Festival or Woolverton Manor Open Day.
Listen to our chat with Sam for more detail
[audio:http://otw-audio.s3.amazonaws.com/gift-to-nature-sam-give-bees-a-chance.mp3]
