The Bee Cause: Year 1 in Pictures

The Bee Cause: Year 1 in Pictures
As The Bee Cause goes into hibernation for
the winter it’s time to look back on the first bee
season. And what a year it’s been.
Since taking off in April The Bee Cause has
created a big buzz across England and Wales,
with a network of local groups, individual activists
and staff all working together towards a National
Bee Action Plan.
Over 100,000 actions were taken in a year of
festivals, political milestones, Bee Walks, bee
hotels, bee breakfasts and more.
www.foe.co.uk/bees
April
>Launching The Bee Cause
A garden on the South Bank
Day 1 of the campaign saw us transform
an area of London’s South Bank into
a bee-friendly wildflower meadow. We
gave away 100s of plants to the public
and won coverage including on the
BBC, ITV’s Daybreak, The Guardian,
Metro and more. Nick Clegg used his
speech to say: “Anyone who’s been on
the South Bank this morning will have
seen Friends of the Earth have turned it
into a wildflower meadow to publicise
the importance of bees to UK GDP.”
vLocal groups get busy
Local groups were buzzing to get
involved and helped get the campaign
off to a flying start, including sowing a
wildflower meadow in Waltham Forest,
a “Bee Aware” talk in Cirencester and a
stall visited by Alan Titchmarsh at the
Greener Living Show in the New Forest.
>The big seed giveaway
Online we asked people to sow free
packs of bee-friendly wildflower seeds.
10,000 seeds were snapped up in under
24 hours. That’s enough seeds to plant
a wildflower meadow of 5,000m2.
<Bee Prepared training
events
Local groups and activists got together
with conservationists to cross-pollinate
ideas at 8 training and skillshare events
across the country. There were events
in Darlington, High Wycombe, London,
Chelmsford, Cardiff, Cheltenham and
Northampton.
May
>The big Bee Breakfast
In May we launched The Decline
of England’s Bees – a report by the
University of Reading for Friends of
the Earth detailing how Government
policy affects our bees. Local groups and
activists joined staff and TV presenter
Sarah Raven to launch the report with a
big bee breakfast rich in bee-pollinated
goodies (blueberry muffins, coffee, fresh
fruit) to show what’s at stake unless we
make life better for bees.
^Bees about town
Our busy bees took in the bright
colours of the Chelsea and Hampton
Court Flower Shows in May and
June before joining the crowds at
the Natural History Museum’s Big
Nature Day. Event goers were thrilled
to pose for photos with the bees and
signed our call to Prime Minister David
Cameron for a National Bee Action
Plan.
June
^Public meetings
Our local groups held public meetings
to highlight the plight of bees across
the country. Norwich Friends of the
Earth were joined by Bob Flowerdew of
BBC Garderners’ Question Time fame
at their meeting, along with speakers
from the RSPB and local honeybee
keepers. 200 people swarmed to the
Norwich meeting alone.
<Bee hotels
A home from home
Activists and local groups got busy
building bee hotels in the summer. Bee
hotels make vital nesting space for
the over 200 species of solitary bees
found in the UK. They’re sold in garden
centres but you can make your own for
next to nothing.
^Festival fever
The bees got their wellies out and
packed their tents for a summer of
festivals, swooping into Camp Bestival,
Latitude, Wilderness and the BBC's
Bristol Festival of Nature. Campaigners
collected thousands of signatures
calling for a National Bee Action Plan.
July
<Bees charge for their
services
Our busy pollinators put the case
for a National Bee Action plan to
the Government’s Natural Capital
Committee at Westminster in July
– this invoice for the Department of
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
shows that the cost of replacing bees’
free of charge services to nature is
at least £1.8bn per year. Then they
buzzed down to Wimbledon for some
bee-pollinated strawberries and cream.
August
vSigning on the dotted line
for bees
The Bee Cause stalls run by local
groups across the country were hives
of activity offering a range of things
to do. The public signed a staggering
16,000 Petition Cards at stalls and
events calling on David Cameron to
introduce a National Bee Action Plan.
>We’re going on a Bee Walk
Local groups were joined by over 400
people including MPs on Bee Walks over
the summer to find out what’s good and
bad for bees. Several are now looking to
improve their local areas based on what
they’ve learned. The Eastbourne and
District group secured a council motion
to write the first Local Bee Action Plan
– and used the findings of the Bee
Walk to help write the motion.
<Welsh victory for The Bee
Cause
Wales led the way in helping bees on
23 July when the Welsh Environment
Minister John Griffiths (pictured left, in
the middle) made the historic pledge
to develop a Pollinator Action Plan for
Wales. This was the first major win for
the campaign and showed the political
will that exists. The spotlight shifts to
David Cameron to follow suit.
^Shops and stickers
We teamed up with local shops to put
labels on fruit to remind people just
how much we have to thank bees for.
September
^Bees swarm the party
conferences
Our bees headed to Brighton,
Birmingham and Manchester for the
party conference season to take The
Bee Cause to the heart of the political
action. We handed out locally grown
apples to delegates and politicians
to make sure bee decline’s on the
Government’s agenda.
>8 September
Day of Action
It was time for our local groups
and activists to get even buzzier on
8 September. Over 50 groups got
stuck in with Bee Walks, stalls, film
screenings and sowing wildflower
meadows. Our Reading group even
organised a “Don’t Worry, Bee Happy”
poetry and music event.
And finally...
v60 Bee Worlds
We’re creating 60 new bee-friendly
spaces in Britain across 2012/13 to tie
in with the Queen’s 60th Jubilee. The
first meadows were created at Aberdeen
University and by Lewisham Friends of
the Earth and several are being primed
for sowing across the country.
^Schools
What next
for The Bee
Cause?
We started taking the campaign to
schools to encourage children and
their teachers to get involved and
joined the BBC’s Mr Bloom Roadshow.
We’re looking forward to more work
with our young bee lovers next year.
We’re looking forward to 2013 for
another un-bee-lievable year of
helping British bees as we build
towards a National Bee Action Plan.
Our bees site
www.foe.co.uk/bees
Campaign Hubs
http://forum.foe.co.uk/campaignhubs/
Friends of the Earth Limited. www.foe.co.uk