Taffs Well Quarry provides perfect environment for 150,000 honey bees
AS winter approaches, around 150,000 honey bees are preparing to colonize in six hives recently created at CEMEX UK’s Taffs Well Quarry, near Cardiff, South Wales. The 60ha quarry site, with Special Area of Conservation status, provides a perfect environment for the bees with its extensive beech woodland and wide variety of flora and fauna in the woods and on the restored rock benches.
The location of these valuable hives will help increase the biodiversity of the quarry site and local area by enhancing plant and wildlife as well as helping, in a small way, to prevent the recent decline of the bee population in the UK. The hives belong to and are managed by local resident Elaine Spence, who originally was trying to find a good location for just one hive, but found somewhere for all six.
‘Pollinating insects, including honey bees, are vital for our natural environment and its biodiversity,’ she said. ‘It is also estimated they pollinate up to a third of all our food and pollinators, worth £430 million per year to British agriculture. Taffs Well Quarry is an excellent site for the hives as it has plenty of space with available 'food' for the bees.’
In 2010, CEMEX UK, in conjunction with the RSPB, launched a biodiversity strategy to enrich nature across their operations. This included not only enhancing projects, such as the siting of the bee hives, but the creation and maintenance of 1,000 hectares of priority habitats by 2020, which represents a major investment in protecting and promoting nature and wildlife.
RSPB biodiversity advisor Dr Sam Tarrant said: ‘We can all help pollinating insects by providing a range of flowering plants and shrubs in our gardens, and leaving dead wood on plants or laying on the floor to provide nesting places.’
