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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