World Bee Day: A Decade of Bees at White Rose Leeds

National World - LocalTV

Did you know there are hundreds of thousands of bees living in hives on the roof of the White Rose Shopping Centre? To mark World Bee Day on 20th May, we buzzed along to find out more.

Transcript

00:00 We're celebrating World Bee Day which falls on the 20th of May here.

00:09 It's actually 10 years since we started the bee hives at White Rose.

00:13 It was something I started really as a result from the team who work at the shopping centre

00:17 who are really keen on the environmental impact and how bees could help crops and flowers

00:23 and plants in the local area.

00:24 And it's really, really grown from there.

00:26 White Rose Shopping Centre is usually buzzing with shoppers but did you know it's also home

00:31 to around half a million bees during the height of summer.

00:34 We often go into schools and talk about our nature strategy and bees make a big, big part

00:38 of that but the school children and community groups who come up here are just fascinated

00:42 by the bees, how it all works, how the queens work and how the drones work and the female

00:47 workers etc.

00:48 You'll also see lots of plants and flowers and crops that we put for the bees, lots of

00:51 wild planting going on around us as well so it's kind of a bee haven really.

00:56 What's really special about the White Rose bee hives is it's maintained by Luke Wilson

00:59 who's our on-site cleaning team manager.

01:02 So when he's not doing his day job he pops up here once a week during the summer months

01:05 and a bit less frequently during the winter months.

01:08 He's been doing that for about six years now.

01:10 He's supported by Keith Dobson who's a very, very experienced Yorkshire beekeeper, 51 years

01:14 no doubt.

01:15 With bee numbers in decline in the UK the team are proud to be supporting them here

01:19 and much like the major supermarkets which can be found at the centre, a slightly different

01:24 sort of nectar is collected on the roof and shared with local communities.

01:29 We produce about 100 jars of this honey each year.

01:33 We don't sell it, people often say do you sell the honey, no we don't.

01:36 We have ended it into a great Yorkshire show once before and came third, did really, really

01:40 well many, many years ago.

01:42 We give it to local community groups, local charities etc.

01:45 White Rose really see the challenge around bees and the production of bees and we want

01:48 to support their growth with pollination and what they do to food production around the

01:52 world so the bee is really an undervalued insect that we're really trying to thrive

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