Bee Farming and Outdoor Activities

Bristol is a beautiful city with wonderful parks and estates but we're not utilising these amazing spaces to their full potential while maintaining their green assets. Take the Frome Valley, the Avon Valley, Ashton Court and all other estate areas and places of outstanding natural beauty and look at starting 1000's of bee hives to produce Bristol Honey, Wax and even look at springs to start a Bristol Spring Water org. At the same time BCC can run several Outdoor Activity Companies with high ropes courses, archery, climbing & abseiling, Raft building, river and land based team challenges and orienteering. Working through parks with Crazy Golf coures as well, there are ways to make open spaces better without developing them for pride of place and opportunities for everyone, expecially extra-curricular activities for School. Maybe even in partnership with Bristol's head office for ASDAN Awarding Body which assist schools throughout the UK.

Why the contribution is important

This idea brings green capital projects even closer, it helps bee's to have safe harvesting homes, it helps young people to learn more about the outdoors, it offers confidence sessions to people with depression, it offers young people an exciting extra-curriculum for school, it see's Bristol produce essential food ingredients, it create's 100's of jobs, it helps to protect green spaces through income revenue and it brings the countryside closer to the urban areas.

by user946047 on November 25, 2013 at 02:15PM

Current Rating

Average rating: 4.3
Based on: 14 votes

Comments

  • Posted by user681880 November 26, 2013 at 15:08

    Love the beehives idea

  • Posted by user734334 November 27, 2013 at 11:37

    I love this and have been looking myself for a place for my beehives. Perhaps allowing private persons to rent or add their own beehives and other equipment would further increase revenue and reduce costs? Working together with the bristol bee people will be a good idea.

  • Posted by user536903 November 27, 2013 at 12:56

    Yeah i loved the bee hive concept when i first saw them at the big green week exhibit...

    this is a nice idea with minimal investment the returns are great

  • Posted by user673142 November 28, 2013 at 09:38

    I would love to have a beehive but sadly my garden isn't big enough. They are very helpful and would be ideal to have near allotments for producing fruit and veg.

  • Posted by user412750 January 01, 2014 at 15:52

    Increasing opportunities for people to tend bees is a good idea. The idea could tie in with the council's extant meadow initiative (to create flowering meadows of either wild flowers or annual garden flowers) in order to enhance biodiversity. The two meadows so far have been by the M32 at St Paul's and on Hengrove Way.

    So this idea could tie in with the creation of further meadows in the Bristol estate areas mentioned above, to further not only the number of meadows, but also to increase the numbers of bees that pollinate the flowers (and other insect pollinators, such as butterflies).

    Perhaps it could even enhance the opportunities for young people by providing training and work opportunities in meadow/habitat maintenance, as well as in bee keeping.

    I'm less keen on turning all green areas into activities centres. Any such development should be limited so as not to destroy wildlife habitat, and if done, there should be full environmental impact surveys done first, with full mitigation of adverse ecological effects where they exist.

  • Posted by user932309 January 09, 2014 at 14:14

    Yes, using all the open spaces to their maximum potential - to put us city dwellers in touch with the land, nature, soil and wildlife, and our own physicality a lot more. We need to get out more! All schools can increase dramatically rates of outdoor activity and learning.

  • Posted by user848220 December 23, 2014 at 15:55

    Thank you for submitting and sharing your idea. We are currently working with partners to establish a Pollinator Forum, implement a Local Pollinator Strategy, and organise a Pollinator Summit, which will be taking place early next year. All of these will help facilitate further action in Bristol that will benefit bees and other pollinators.

    We are looking into the potential to set up a bee hive at the Lord Mayor’s Mansion, with the assistance of Bee Bristol and we also have plans to enhance and create a number of flower meadows in Bristol, which will provide a vital food source for pollinators.
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