‘My son came home from school one day and said ‘Daddy, the honey bees are all dying, can we get a beehive?’ And I said OK let’s give it a go’
A GLOBAL COMPANY BASED IN NOTTINGHAM CITY CENTRE HAS EMPLOYED A BEEKEEPER IN A BID TO HELP THE ENVIRONMENT
TUCKED away next to one of Nottingham’s busiest roads are a number of hives from which up to 750,000 honeybees depart each day to pollinate the city.
Samuel Merryweather has been a beekeeper for six years, but only started “doing it seriously” during lockdown in 2020.
Like many people, Samuel rediscovered his appreciation and love of the outdoors during the pandemic.
The climate emergency has been widely reported for many years now and businesses, organisations and individuals are coming to the realisation that much of what makes the planet so special is at risk of being lost forever.
Among nature under threat are varying species of bees, which pollinate almost three quarters of the crops which in turn feed the world’s population.
The Labour-run Nottingham City Council is aiming to make the city carbon neutral by 2028, and some of its most prominent and long-standing businesses and organisations are beginning to share this responsibility.
One such company is Experian, which has its East Midlands hub based at the Sir John Peace building off the A453 Queens Drive and next door to the NG2 tram stop.
Samuel has been employed by the global success story that is Experian to look after a colony of three quarters of a million honeybees to help maintain ecosystems in the city.
Beforehand he had done an assortment of jobs, such as labouring, teaching and professional Thai boxing, and up until 2017 he had been a student studying civil engineering.
“It just wasn’t for me and we just found bees,” he said. “My eldest son came home from school one day and said daddy the honeybees are all dying, can we get a beehive? And I said OK let’s give it a go. We got badly stung that year and didn’t get any honey either with a failing colony. It’s going all right now.”
A number of species of bees are endangered at present, particularly wild bee species which have been for years battling agricultural pesticides and the industrialisation of the natural world.
On top of this the climate is changing, with extreme temperatures and weather events arriving abnormally throughout differing seasons, leaving the vital pollinators suffering dearly.
Samuel raised concerns over the current climate, with extreme heat currently searing the city and beyond with record temperatures predicted this week.
However, he hopes the location of the honeybee colony, away from agricultural dangers, will help them thrive in the future.
“I’m managing these colonies for Experian and it is going to really help pollinate the environment,” he added. “We’ve up to 750,000 honeybees at the highest season. That’s a massive rate of pollination so you get a lot more seedlings and plants. “It is going to help the abundance of wildflowers and the futures of flora and fauna. “They will be out flying up to even three miles. If there is a shortage of nectar round here then they will go. They have been seen to go out up to eight miles. “They have the Trent Embankment, there is plenty of Himalayan Balsam and Rosebay Willowherb over there on the Wilford side.
“We just need some rain and some consistency in the weather, and some sunshine. “At the moment it is really, really dry so all plants need that moisture to be able to produce the nectar in the first place.” The honeybee colony has been introduced by Experian as part of its newly refurbished city campus. The company, at least in the UK, is now itself carbon neutral.
The car park on the campus will soon be filled with wildflowers, pollinated by the bee colony, as well as an assortment of trees.
This, city council leader David Mellen says, ties in nicely with the council’s own plans to rewild much of the city, including the Broad Marsh and central reservations of the busy ring road.
Councillor Mellen, who represents the Dales ward, added: “I think every business needs to think about [the environmental impact], not everybody can do it the way Experian has with this sort of size and scale, but every business can do something.
“The quest for carbon neutrality in the city involves everybody, what you do with your own life, your own rubbish, your own garden, to try and enhance the environment, the biodiversity, the bee-friendliness.
“We have done it with things as simple as the central reservations on the ring-road and not just turned them into manicured lawns, but wildflowers.
“It’s about being creative and I hope other businesses that have started on this journey will follow Experian’s lead.”
Every business can do something ... the quest for carbon neutrality in the city involves everybody.
David Mellen