Bee Friends Open Afternoon at Sheepdrove on Saturday 31st August at 2.30pm
Come and learn to identify bumblebees on a Bee Safari with the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, visit our Bee-Friendly Market Garden and make your own refreshing smoothie from pollinator dependent fruit on Hungerford Food Community’s Smoothie Bike. You’ll also be able to purchase fresh produce and plants grown in our teaching and demonstration market garden as well as learn about the horticultural courses that take place there – some of them fully or partially funded for local residents. Everyone welcome – although we would appreciate an email to info@timm367.sg-host.com as we would like to provide refreshments. Bring a picnic if you like and picnic in the paddocks around Sheepdrove’s event and wedding venue.
If you enjoy the Bee Safari, why not join us every month between March and October when Clare Alley, Land Management Advisor at Bumblebee Conservation Trust, leads a group of local volunteers on a Sheepdrove BeeWalk from the event venue, through the physic garden, down to the lake, along a meadow on a chalk bank and through the ancient oak woodland, all the while identifying and recording the bumblebees seen as we walk. Identifying bumblebees is not straightforward so it is wonderful to have Clare with us; she catches the bees in a net and then puts them into a clear lidded pot so that we can get a good look at them and have a go at successfully ID-ing. We do have an edited ID guide which only features the bumblebees likely to be seen on the walk at Sheepdrove.
BeeWalk is a national recording scheme run by the Bumblebee Conservation Trust to monitor the abundance of bumblebees and this citizen science project would be impossible without the volunteers across the country who have identified and counted the bumblebees they see on a monthly walk along a set route (aka a transect) from March to October since 2010.
The Hungerford Food Community are bringing their Smoothie Bike to illustrate how we depend pollinators for over 130 fruits and vegetables. In fact, as agriculture transitions away from nitrogen fertilisers, we’ll be depending on pollinators for more foodstuffs. Regenerative farmers are turning to nitrogen fixing legumes to grow the grain crops for bread, pasta, breakfast cereals etc. Legumes, such as clovers, beans and vetches, are flowering plants that require pollination; legumes also provide high quality grazing and silage for livestock so even dairy and meat production is largely reliant on pollinators. A third of UK wild pollinators are in decline with some threatened with extinction; this could seriously impact food supply.
You can find the Hungerfood Food Community – with their smoothie bike – and thirty local producer stalls – including our Market Garden partners Rachel Hammond of Edge Landscaping – on the second Sunday of the month at The Croft Field Centre.
