Hospital staff get buzzy with beekeeping course as hive garden to aid patients

THERE was a real buzz in the air for hospital staff – when they took part in a groundbreaking beekeeping course.

The six workers swapped their NHS outfits for bee hats and veils to help them look after bees in preparation for new hives arriving at University Hospital Llandough.

The hives will be sited in specially landscaped gardens, with the aim of helping to improve the health of patients at the site, near Cardiff.

Not only will the bee garden aim to aid wellbeing and promote mindfulness for those suffering from mental health problems, but it will also be planted with specific flowers to produce “super-honey” to aid wound healing, and allow researchers to test for a link with antibacterial-strength honey.

The garden will build on the work of Professor Les Baillie, from Cardiff University’s School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, and his colleagues, who identified a number of antibacterial compounds in honey that killed antibiotic-resistant hospital superbugs.

The team have been able to identify the plants whose nectar was the source of these potentially therapeutic compounds.

In 2017, Prof Baillie teamed up with a local brewery to produce a beer that contains Welsh “superhoney”. Bang-On Brewery founder Neil Randle and Prof Baillie made the beer using honey from his school’s Pharmabees project. Hives were placed across Cardiff in a bid to find a therapeutic Welsh honey to rival New Zealand’s manuka variety – used as an alternative medicine.