Tuesday, July 8, 2025

The Hive Architect: Saving Britain's Wild Bees

There is a widely held theory that the British honey bee couldn’t exist without being domesticated by beekeepers. However, for bee conservationists like Matt Somerville, this theory is ludicrous. He has spent decades admiring free-living honey bees nesting in tree cavities and they are under increasing threats from commercial beekeeping, loss of habitat and other violences of the modern world. So Matt decided to do something about it. For the last 14 years he has spent the winters creating his log hives before driving around all of England in the summer, erecting them as minimal intervention homes for wild honey bees.

A delightful and inspiring documentary. 


 

They're letting wildflowers take over their land. Here's why

A short but inspiring video: David Butterworth and Gill Wilson-Butterworth made a big decision recently, and local watershed groups are calling it a win-win. The Canadian couple turned over part of their land for use by butterflies, birds and bees, and volunteers dug up hundreds of spruce and pine trees to let a wildflower meadow grow up instead from a 'seed bank that was already in the soil.'


 LINK