Buzzclub and The Honey Gardens

Aim: It might sound like an 80s teen band, but actually we need help setting up our community apiary, gardens and wildlife enrichment project.

We moved to a new site in April which we hope to be our home for many years.
having lost our bee based pollinator support project to flooding last year we longed to have another stab at it. And recently we have been lucky enough to start again.
Smoking A Hive

We have a small community of BuzzClub members and five colonies of bees.
We also have a large area that needs to be cleared and cultivated into a public apiary where we can bring our community together to make honey whilst the sun shines. We have five hives up here now, the area is very overgrown with nettles which we are about to harvest to create organic fert and nettle fiber cordage!

The Apiary And Wildlife Gardens Will Be Developed Here

We are currently co producing plans with the buzz club and our other groups to design the apiary to suit all users, creating a herb garden, through raised planters. All weather paths and a clover carpet ‘lawn’ to reduce weeds and give the bees a year round source of food. Creating seating and observation areas, an a forage orchard with fruit and nut trees. Foraging hedge lines and wildlife habitat. All with a view to offsetting some of the farms carbon footprint. Sustaining our bees and increasing biodiversity in the area. Whilst giving our community a space for wellbeing and skill building.

We Have Made A Start Clearing And Cutting Back. 

We want to run all age groups in the apiary and currently have members ranging from 8 to 60 plus, Its really important that the apiary is open to the whole community, bee they an old buzz or a young worker, anyone with an interest in preserving the wildlife of our farm is welcome.

'' I have been wanting to learn about bee keeping for a long time, other groups say I am too young but without young bee keepers, we risk loosing them all. At Buzzclub I am treated like a member of the team.''

Buzzclub Member aged 10 years
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We don't stop this project at bees though, the garden has many features we want to include:

Wildlife pond,
Bat boxes,

Badger hide, 

Clover carpet, 

Living roof arbor / tool store, 

Natural forage hedging,
Fruit and nut tree copse
Hedgehog habitat.
Teaching apiary
Rent a hive spaces
Wild flower raised beds
Micro veg gardens

Our Honey Haven home education group, Carrot Club and Buzzclub have started outlining their plans for the wildlife garden and apiary and we have extended the planning to include the Micro gardens for Natural dyes and forage & food.

Now we need to bring the community together and make the very best of our new home and our vision. and we are hoping you will help.