University of Greenwich Bees

This week we are given an update from the various bee hives we have across the  University of Greenwich. Since getting hives at Southwood House on the Avery Hill Campus (looked after by John & Christine Hird) a couple of years ago we have added further hives at Avery Hill, managed by local beekeeper Colin Edwards, hives at Greenwich looked after by Camilla Goddard of Capital Bee and now the Natural Resources Institute (NRI) have installed some hives at Medway too. We here how some of our bees have been getting on this year, starting with the ones at Medway where Jeremy Cooper explains how their first season has gone:

‘After arriving as flat packs, the three bee hives were assembled and installed on the Medway Campus in June, which was later than ideal, but season started slowly and the colonies of bees arrived later than expected. The bees have been busy since then, operating from their hives situated between Hawke and Grenville buildings.

This month saw our first harvest of 37 jars of lovely clear honey, which were distributed to members of the beekeeping group and some NRI managers.

NRI Beekepers group inspecting their hives

NRI Beekepers group inspecting their hives

Since June, we have been learning as we go about bee husbandry. By a happy coincidence, a local bee expert was on the campus when we were making one of our first hive inspections and he (known locally as John the bee man) has been very helpful in training and advising the group of volunteers. All 20 group members have now had the chance to handle frames which are full of bees, and to learn how to tell the queen from workers and drones.

Several people in the group took photographs of bees on flowers, and some have been used on labels for our first harvest. This picture, taken by Mark Parnell’s wife Sue, is one of eight that featured on the labels this first season.

NRI honey bee

NRI honey bee

For the rest of the year there are several jobs to be done, including treating the hives against the deadly mite Varroa, that has been one of the factors to have reduced bee populations in recent years. Other factors as less straightforward, and if we can get the support, members of NRI may do some research in future years to find out more about how to safeguard these important pollinators. In the meantime we are marveling at the way the bees operate (and enjoying the honey!)’

John & Christine let us know how our original hives at Southwood House have fared this year, ‘We extracted [honey] at the end of July, it wasn’t a brilliant yield but better that 2011. As you may have read in the press the weather hasn’t been very kind to bees this year. After extraction it was time for putting the varroa treatment into practice, which takes four weeks.  Varroa is a parasite we cant eradicate but hopefully can keep under control.

After the treatment was complete we then start to feed, we feed the bees as we need to make sure they have enough stores to overwinter.  We feed a solution of white cane sugar mixed with warm water so it dissolves and the bees can then store it.

So now we are up to date, we have been down to see the bees and have hefted (lifted to feel the weight) the hives which seem fine for stores. Within the next few weeks we will put the mouse guards on the entrance and a protective cover round each hive to prevent woodpecker damage.’ In total we have received 60 jars of honey from the bees at Southwood house and still have a few leftover – get in contact with sustainability@greenwich.ac.uk if you fancying buying a jar.

John & Christine looking for the Queen earlier this year

John & Christine looking for the Queen bee earlier this year

Colin Edwards, another local beekeeper also keeps hives at the Avery Hill Campus, ‘The Avery hill bees, having had a rough start this season due to weather conditions, the spring crop of honey was zero.  However, after introducing a few new queens Italian and Buckfast, and a few of my own,  all the colonies have built up well, but the second crop was very low due to lack of nectar flow. All the bees are now feeding well and looking promising for the winter season spent on the meadow,  so we are hopefully looking forward to a better honey crop next year!

Lastly I would just like to thank the staff of the Avery hill campus  for all the help and support throughout the year.’

Avery Hill Meadow Beehive

Avery Hill meadow beehive with woodpecker protection

Camilla Goddard’s bees at the Greenwich Campus were removed on the request of LOCOG and they spent a few months on holiday in London Fields in Hackney and Covent Garden in central London. They are being moved back into the hives as we speak and will be looking forward to being back in Greenwich!

Two hives from one! Bees at Southwood House

Last Friday saw our bees at Southwood House in Avery Hill start a swarm and the formation of a new colony. The building services team spotted the bees gathering in a swarm underneath one of the two hives while doing a walk-round check of the campus. After a couple of telephone conversations with our beekeepers, John and Christine Hird (the beekepers for our Southwood House bees) decided to come and visit the bees and see what ought to be done.

Bees swarming on the bottom of the hive

John tries on some of the protective bee keeping clothing

When John and Christine arrived we donned the protective clothing and had a closer look at the swarm that was forming. Bees tend to swarm when they are looking to replace an older queen with a new one and is part of the reproductive cycle of a hive. The hive will create some queen cells and the queen will lay eggs in these, then the hive will stop feeding the queen so that she is lighter and more able to fly. When the old queen leaves the hive (sometimes taking as many as 60% of the bees with her) she will find a resting place while the scouts look for potential new places to form a hive. The scouts go off to look for new loactions and the new location is determined by the level of excitement the scouts communicate about to the hive. This process normally takes around three days and the bees tend to be non-agressive during this time as there is less focus on defending brood.

When we had a closer look at the bees it was clear that this is what they were doing but rather than let the scouts find a new home and lose the swarm of bees John and Christine decided to capture the swarm and place them in a new hive or a ‘nuc’. This would lead to us getting two hives from the one hive that had started swarming. To do this John opened up the hive and started to look to see if the queen was there and look for queen cells. As expected there were a few queen cells and no sign of the queen bee in the hive, this meant the old queen had left and was looking to create a new hive and the remaining bees were looking after the queen cells and brood inside to get a new queen for the old hive. After the hive had been checked we then went to capture the swarm in the nuc.

Checking the hive to see if the queen bee was still inside

Getting a closer look at the bees working on the cells

Normally bees would swarm in a brach of a tree which would then require a litte shake to get them to fall into the new hive but as they were attached to the bottom of the hive this meant we had to take apart the hive and get the nuc right underneath it – with a couple of bashes and a couple of brushes the majority of the bees were in the nuc. The queen went in and soon enough the remaining bees on the bottom of the hive started to diminish as they followed the queen into it. The nuc was then fitted with a couple of frames so that the new hive could stat to form cells for the queen to lay eggs and the hive to bring up some new brood and of course seal off some honey too!

Moving the bees off the base of the hive into the 'nuc'

The nuc - now with the swarm of bees inside along with the old queen

2010 The Year in Sustainability

2010 has been a big year for sustainability at the University of Greenwich, and looking back at what we have achieved I believe we can be proud of how we have taken the University forward.
The successes of the Sustainability Team were reflected in the People & Planet Green League which was released in April when the University of Greenwich jumped from 103rd (2009) up to 61st. Sustainability issues are moving further up the agenda within the higher education sector so it will be difficult to achieve such a large jump this year, although we are of course committed to keep improving and constantly reviewing the University’s approach to sustainability.

January 2010 saw the University of Greenwich present and approve its Sustainability Policy, which can be seen here (www.gre.ac.uk/sustainability/sustainability) and is signed off by the University’s Vice Chancellor Tessa Blackstone. The policy draws together the findings of a baseline review that was conducted to establish the University’s environmental aspects and impacts and develops a policy to deal with these. The policy was drawn together as part of the environmental management system that the University has signed up for (EcoCampus). In the summer of 2010 the University was awarded the Bronze award by EcoCampus and we hope we are just a couple of months away from achieving Silver now.

EcoCampus Bronze Award

With carbon and energy reduction becoming a key priority through the Carbon Reduction Commitment being introduced into UK law and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) introducing requirements linked to carbon reduction as part of their Capital Investment Framework (CIF2), the University has taken some significant steps towards addressing these issues. HEFCE require that each institution should have a carbon management plan submitted by March 2011 and have set a sector wide target of 43% reduction in emissions by 2020 (against a 2005/06 baseline), so many of the cogs whirring away in the Sustainability Team are working towards achieving that target.

On waste the University has seen new bins being introduced at the Greenwich Campus which are divided in two for main two waste streams that the University creates. However the recycling rate at the University varies widely from very good in some areas achieving nearly 70% recycling and the not so good where some areas are achieving no better than 30% recycling. In 2011 waste and recycling will rise up the agenda and as a result we will expect the amount of waste generated to go down along with the amount sent to landfill and the percentage of waste recycled to go up. The University ran a very successful re-use campaign at the end of the summer term in 2010 diverting would-be waste from Avery Hill halls of residences to the benefit of charities through CRISP. Internally the emergence of reusing everything and anything through the University’s own unofficial freecycle of the ‘all-staff-announce’ emails has been a great success – in fact the Sustainability team office is kitted out with many an item first offered on the internal email.

New Bins at Greenwich Campus

Food has been another area of achievement for the University, following on from 2009’s award for discontinuing the use of bottled water in hospitality. The University was awarded the Good Egg award at the Good Food on the Public Plate Awards and were celebrated for five areas of achievement, including the use of organic milk, free range eggs and MSC certified fish. On top of these achievements 2010 saw the first meeting of the Fairtrade Steering Group which includes the Students Union (SUUG), the Medway Student Association (UMSA), ABM (the main University caterers) and Sodexo (who also provide some catering on campus) who are all intent on achieving Fairtrade Status for the University.

Biodiversity has appeared on the agenda for the University in 2010 with the creation of the Biodiversity Steering Group and draft Biodiversity Action Plans have been drawn up for each of the University’s sites. 900m2 has been identified on the Avery Hill Campus for an agricultural grade pollen and nectar bee mix to be planted, which will be great news for the two hives of bees that now occupy the gardens at Southwood House. Greenwich Campus has also seen five hives introduced in 2010 into the mausoleum area, right next to where Sir Thomas Hardy (Nelson’s right hand man) is buried, and all these bees will busy pollinating come the springtime. Good news for anyone who wants to use the fruits of the campus for, blackberry and apple pie, quince jelly or sloe gin (on that note I would have to say 2010 sloe harvest produced a delicious couple of bottles!)

The Sustainability Team has experienced a lot of growth this year, even without the pollination of the bees on hand! Of course there is the very important addition to the team in the shape of the Green Gnome (yours truly) who has been prolific in his blog writing and on twitter, oh and John too, who joined the Sustainability Team in April, and has now signed up for a further 12 months with the Sustainability Team. Along with the direct additions to the team we have now swelled in influence thanks to the creation of the Sustainability Champions Network. There is now a sustainability champion in almost every department helping to promote the University’s Sustainability Policy and to promote environmentally friendly and sustainable practice within their department. To help them do this the Green Impact project has been rolled out for the first time in the University and our sustainability champions are busy implementing tasks such as setting all prin
ters in their department to print double sided, promoting the University’s green travel initiatives and implementing shutdown plans to ensure energy is not wasted over holidays and weekends.

John

Green Gnome

The sustainability champions are proving to be a key communication channel to the wider University community, and that is not the only step towards better communication we have seen. The sustainability website is soon to launch following on from the emergence of the sustainability twitter feed and of course this blog. The Sustainability Induction was introduced for new starters (and existing interested staff) and also for the new student Residential Assistants. Interserve the University’s new suppliers for portering and cleaning had to include their sustainability credentials when tendering for the cleaning contract and this is something that all our suppliers will be expected to do in the future.

New Green Cleaning products

John and Kat became more involved with LUEG, the London Universities Environmental Group, both taking up places on the group’s executive board, and hosted the LUEG AGM at Greenwich in the summer time.

Travel wise John and Kat continue to cycle to work on a daily basis and were both in the top five riders from the University that took part in the TFL London Cycle Challenge in June, Neil Garrod, Tom Barnes and Adele brooks were the other three. Overall the University clocked up more than 10,500 miles, saving around three tonnes of CO2 and burning the equivalent of over 1,500 Mars bars in calories. The University has also been successful in receiving funding from Walking Works to promote walking to, from and while at work and Simon Baldwin from Accommodation walked away with 24 mince pies as a result of winning the walking to work mince pie challenge.

Before this turns into a dissertation I shall sign off with the knowledge that I haven’t even started to tell you about the 100 or so projects identified to go into the Carbon Management Plan, the voltage optimisation units that have been installed, the Greenwich graduate attributes or about many of the other Sustainability success stories that have emerged from the University of Greenwich Sustainability Team over the course of 2010. Here’s to 2010 and to a look towards 2011 hoping that we will be even more successful over the next 12 months. Happy New Year!