Portsmouth & District Beekeepers Association - Honey Bee Swarms 

Portsmouth Beekeepers operate a swarm collection service to assist members of the public and to safeguard the valuable honey bee. If you get a swarm of Bees in your garden what can you do?
Swarms usually happen during the late morning or afternoon from April to August. If the Beekeeper can get to the swarm quickly the bees can usually be collected safely. Although a swarm of bees is normally harmless, they do frighten some people and it is best to leave them alone and keep your distance. When the bees arrive they will quickly form a cluster on a bush or tree. They will normally stay like that for the rest of the day.

If you witness this then please call one of the Beekeepers below:

John Perry       02392 468609

Sue Tinney      02392 421291

The area covered is about a 20 mile radius of Portsmouth. This will cover the whole of Portsmouth. Hayling Island, Havant, Waterlooville, Portchester, Fareham, Wickham, Locks Heath, Titchfield and Gosport.  

The Plight of the Bee and Bumble Bee

The honey bee crisis has been hitting the headlines of late. Many colonies have died out with beekeepers in the UK losing an average of 25% of their Bees last year. Bumble Bees are also under pressure as there are not enough wild flowers for them. Millions of pounds worth of crops are polinated by Bees every year, basically the Bee is vital to the environment.

You can help by planting plants and flowers that Bees love. Bees are looking for nectar and pollen and prefer flowers with small single flowers and they prefer a mix of flowers rather than only one solitary plant. Try planting Broom, Pyracantha, Sage, Escallonia, Candytuft, Hebe, Lavender, Thyme, Heather and Ceanothus. For a detailed list of plants for bees see: Plants for the Beekeepers Garden

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You can also try to encourage Solitary Bees such as miners, masons, white-faced and wool cardersto to nest in your garden with products such as this Bee Nester or the porcelain Bee Hive above:

Honey 

Honey is one of the healthiest life giving foods you could hope to find. Each variety has a distinct flavour and charachteristic depending on the location of hives and the plants and flowers the bees have been visiting, such as blackthorne and sycamore in spring or blackberries and clover in summer. You can choose densly flavoured honey from Heather found on the moors or delicate flavoured honey from wallflowers in meadows and orchards.
Although Honey can be 80% sugar it is an unrefined sugar and is therefore a natural product. To produce just 500g of honey, worker bees will fly around 60,000 miles, taking nectar from 2 million flowers en route pollinating as they go. Pollen contains amino acids, vitamins and minerals and givels humans immunity against bacterial and fungal infections.

If you are interested in buying some local honey then please email use the for on http://www.cutcomb.co.uk You can pick the honey up from Whiteley.

Hampshire PURE HONEY 454g 1lb net @ £4.50
Hampshire PURE HONEY 227g 8oz net @ £3.00

Stocks maybe limited depending on the time of year. Please return the jars after use. Visit www.cutcomb.co.uk for more information.

Fareham Borough Council's statement on how they are helping the bees

We very much appreciate the plight of the Honey Bee and would like to assure you that such issues are taken into consideration in the management of our green spaces throughout the Borough and as part of the Council's Local Biodiversity Action Plan.

Over the last ten or so years many initiates have been taken, not only to support bees but encourage species diversity and habitat formation across the extensive and differing open spaces that we manage.

Management plans are in place for major countryside and parks sites which also link to our grounds maintenance contracts.
To encourage bees and other pollen dependent insects we have opened glades and rides in our woodlands which in turn brings in light and the formation of herbaceous plants and overtime the natural establishment of wildflowers.

On allotments, which inherently are a haven for insects we have left areas on unusable plots and land abutting agricultural land to act as wildlife corridors, beneficial also to the allotment gardeners who depend on the bees for fruit tree pollination.
Changes to grass cutting regimes and identifying areas where grass can be left to forage harvesting and in turn allow for the reintroduction of wildflower species has been applied throughout the borough with great success where we have seen the reintroduction of species such as the pyramidal orchid.

Even floral bedding plants have a percentage chosen from the Compositae and Labiatae plant families such as Salvias and Gazanias which are known to attract and be beneficial to bees.
In our working with the community and schools we spend much time educating on such issues and have four events scheduled this year to support the International Year of Biodiversity.

The work of the council has been recognised over many years with of our participation in both South and Southeast England in Bloom and Britain in Bloom where we have consistently won awards for our parks services and also through the Green Flag national parks standard where we have two sites holding the Flag.

Both award structures strongly recognise the issues of habitat and wildlife protection and measures taken by the local authority to ensure such diversity is maintained and protected.

 We will continue to ensure that best practice is taken into consideration when managing our sites for the benefit of all wildlife.

Matt Wakefield

Horticultural Development Officer

Last Updated on Thursday, 09 February 2012 11:38