As an established urban farm at the heart of Hull city, and in alignment with our message promoting environmental sustainability for our community, we took the decision to start keeping bees with the view to producing our very own honey.
With regards to Beekeeping in Hull city centre we are well supported by Yorkshire’s bee keeping community and have built relationships across the region. We regularly help others in the community with their bees, in particular Frith Farm at Beverly who return the favour by helping us with our planting plans for the year ahead. There are a number of benefits to bee keeping, getting close to them and learning about their complex ecosystem and its direct effect on our own, has been an ongoing process involving a very steep learning curve.
A number of our volunteers have donned the bee suit and got their hands in with the bees, something not very many people ordinarily get the opportunity to do, especially in an urban environment, and the resulting boost to self confidence, stemming from trying something new and beyond the comfort zone, is worth the beehive installation alone.
Our beehives provide a rare opportunity for our community to come in and see them up close, to learn from the ways in which the bees interact with each other, share information with each other, working together through whatever struggles might come their way. A life lesson for us all to treasure.
The arrival of our bees last year provided our community with several positive opportunities. We built the hives ourselves along with a group of young people who are on the autistic spectrum, and the honey jar labels were designed by some of the people doing graphic design at Hull prison, utilising our ties with the local probation service and ensuring the whole community’s inclusion in our work at Rooted in Hull.
