Bees
Category: Facilities
Voting closed
Thank you for your Big Idea. Due to delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, this idea was taken to Student Council on Tuesday 15th September 2020, where it was rejected. It was not believed that NTSU had either the capacity or expertise to raise and manage bees at any of our campuses, with there being significant potential for it to actually have a negative impact on the bees' welfare. There was, however, a lot of sympathy for the suggestion to introduce more bee-friendly flowers, particularly at NTU campuses with lots of green space.
It would be great to set up some hives on campus. We could sell the honey in the Union shop and contribute to improving bio diversity across the city .an obvious candidate for location would be brackenhurst campus but urban bee colonies are just as successful. Clifton and city could easily support colonies for increased impact
Comments
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Chelsea Sowden wrote, 28-02-2020 - 16:50Just a quick Q - who would look after these bees? Even if students volunteered, we'd have to have someone who knew what they were doing and the vast majority of students leave over the summer. It'd also be important that we consider the ethics of it. For example, how would we deal with the queen? I wouldn't like the SU to support traditional methods of clipping her wings and marking her with toxic paint so she can't escaoe and can be easily identified. I think it might be nicer to plant more bee-friendly plants and flowers, creating and looking after more green space even if that's things like the living wall on city, look into more bug hotels that can sustain themselves, that kind of thing
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Pavel Timoshenko Timoshenko wrote, 01-03-2020 - 13:54
Beehives require very little care and maintenance as long as they are properly insulated for winter and bees are left with enough honey or in the worst winters one may add some syrup, im saying from personal experience had 20 hives at one point. Regarding the queen bee the process of marking and clipping can be avoided and and she won't go nowhere. Additionally, research on different strains could be carried as long as you avoid africanised bees in urban settings because those tend to be a bit more territorial.
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