In 2012 I attended the Rachel Carson Memorial Lecture entitled “Pesticides and Pollinators – a future without bees” by Sam Roddick. Sam gave a very powerful presentation, and what I heard that evening left me with huge concerns for the welfare of pollinating insects in our environment. I decided there and then to do whatever I could to help, however small.
I began by planting wildflowers on my balcony. The sketching course I'm currently doing with the phenomenal illustrator Mattias Adolfsson on the Domestika platform inspired me to make a fun cartoon strip of these beginnings of my falling in love with the bees!
From planting on my balcony, I progressed to training as a beekeeper with the London Beekeepers Association (LBKA). I then began to take an active part role in a project from Bankside Open Spaces Trust (BOST) to support residents to grow food in our community garden. The garden already had lavender beds and various fruit trees. We were also planning a wildflower area as we have lots of bumblebee nests, visiting honey bees and a wide range of other insects. This is currently on hold while plans are made to reactivate the gardening activities, but I'm looking forward to getting involved with this again soon.
As my knowledge about honeybees grew, so did my interest in other species of bee. So I was thrilled to have the opportunity to attend a free educational course with the Bumblebee Conservation Trust (BBCT) at Walthamstow Wetlands. What a wonderful day we had! The staff were fantastically knowledgeable and I learned so much.
My favourite part of the course was when we went on a "bumblebee safari" around the wetlands. Using nets, we managed to catch (humanely of course) a few different types of bumblebees in nets, identify them and release them quickly and watch them fly off to carry on with their pollinating activities.
I support BBCT as a member and also when I can, with occasional additional donations. They are a fabulous small charity, so if anyone feels able to support them I'm sure it would be much appreciated.
As a keen photographer, I'm constantly documenting the insects, flowers and trees I encounter every day in this urban metropolis I love living in. I'm passionate about using my Nikon macro lens to get up close to nature. I have hundreds of photos and am including a tiny selection of my favourites here in this blog.
I really enjoy giving fun, educational talks to colleagues in the workplace about honeybees. I'm now planning to extend my talks to include a highly interactive version for children. The more we can do, however big or small, all goes towards helping to protect these precious pollinators.
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Blog copyright Barbara Grehs Published on 2 December 2020
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