Here at Hive19, we’re buzzed (sorry!) to announce that we’ve adopted a beehive through SW Honey Farms – a family run honey farm with apiaries spread across the coast of West Sussex.
Now that we’ve adopted one of SW’s beehives, we’ll join a dozens of other local businesses including Brightec and Extech Cloud in proudly displaying our logo on a professionally tended beehive, home to a colony of British honey bees.
SW Honey Farms’ founder, Stuart Weekes, started the company in 2019 with 10 hives, and since then the business has shown tremendous growth through selling locally produced honey, beeswax products, and even training courses to help people get their start in beekeeping.
Like us, Stuart understands the importance bees have in mitigating some of the world’s most pressing climate challenges, telling the Sussex Chamber of Commerce: “Honeybees help preserve the ecological balance and biodiversity in nature … The number of bees in a local area is a good indication of the state of the environment, so we should all be concerned that numbers in West Sussex are currently falling.”
At Hive19, we’re very conscious of our environmental impact, and always trying to find new ways to reduce the carbon footprint of our operations and create a more positive future for the world’s climate.
Through our hive adoption, we hope to help local bee farmers like Stuart maintain a healthy population in his apiaries, while spreading awareness of his brilliant scheme to like minded businesses throughout Sussex.
Why bees matter
Bees and other pollinating insects are one of the most universal markers of a healthy ecosystem. They’re responsible for helping a huge variety of plants to bare fruit and seeds, in fact, 80% of European wildflower species need insect pollination to survive.
Bees aren’t just important for keeping our meadows looking great and upholding a natural habitat for other wildlife though. Almost 75% of the world’s crops are dependent on some kind of pollinator, meaning as much as one in every three mouthfuls of food you eat could depend on bees.
Global bee populations have been in decline for several decades now, facing pressures such as habitat loss, changes in climate, and excessive use of pesticides and intensive farming practices. Furthermore, studies have shown that air pollution is having a stifling effect on the scent molecules bees use to navigate and locate food, thereby slowing down the natural rate of pollination.
Stemming the tide
Businesses and governments across the world are forging great initiatives made to protect bee populations. The EU, for example, has passed partial bans on several pesticides that are harmful to bees, and the UN’s FAO has established the 20th of May as World Bee Day to help raise awareness for the role bees have in the ecosystem and the challenges they face.
If you’re wondering what you can do to help protect bees and other essential pollinators, here’s a few tips to make your local ecosystem that much more hospitable:
- Wait until nectar bearing plants have bloomed to mow your lawn.
- Buy locally-produced honey, beeswax candles, and other products that support apiaries.
- Start growing nectar-bearing flowers such as lavender, foxglove, and marigolds somewhere where bees can get to them.
- Buy organic produce and avoid using pesticides that harm bees.
Hive19 are an environmentally conscious creative link building agency based in Brighton. Alongside adopting a bee hive, we have partnered with GreenTheUK to plant wildflower meadows to create wildlife corridors, support native pollinators and conserve at risk species and joined Ecologi as a climate action workforce.
