Hive of activity as World Bee Day takes flight

Perthshire is all abuzz for World Bee Day, with Kinross-based Webster Honey placing more than 100 new hives at sites including Crieff, Dunning and the Strathallan Estate.

As well as producing honey, the hives will be used in beekeeping workshops for schools and nurseries once they reopen, and to give businesses sponsorship opportunities.

Meik Molitor, the beekeeper at Webster Honey, said that assembling so many hives had been an international logistic feat.

“One hundred and twenty packages of bees, which have arrived in stages over several days, is a huge undertaking to manage, involving materials and equipment from several European countries,” he said.

“The hive frames have come from Eastern Europe, the wax sheets from England, together with hive parts from Denmark.

“The bees themselves are from Italy, and I am a German beekeeper looking after them all.”

More than 200 colonies of bees live in the new hives, which have been housed at the company’s school that opened at Scotlandwell last year, before being moved to their new homes.

“Bees are doing well during the lockdown – that’s one silver lining for us,” Molitor pointed out.

“Everyone is at home doing their gardens and planting flowers, less parks and grounds are getting cut, so it’s great for bees to forage, and the air quality is much improved due to lack of traffic.”

He’s looking forward to teaching children again once the lockdown is eased.

“Obviously, we can’t do any school or nursery engagement at the moment until the schools reopen, which is real shame,” Meik added.

“As soon as it is safe to do so we will be back teaching children about bees.

“They absolutely love the courses, and last term we successfully widened out the areas of Scotland we are covering, by going to schools in Glasgow and the west for the very first time.”

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