Protect the Bees and Save the Earth

Bees are key in our ecosystem as they provide pollination, a vital activity for the reproduction of many plant species. Unfortunately, their numbers are falling and they need our help. At Greenway IPM, we are committed to protecting our environment and we have put a new project in motion to protect bees in the North East.

In 2019, we did some experimenting and found that bumble bee nests could be moved out of peoples lofts and relocated. Company owner, Andrew Hancock, rehomed five bumble bee nests into his back garden that summer. His wife put her foot down about taking more, so we asked some local resident groups if they would be interested in rehoming bees and we got a great response.

Off the back of this we started The Great British Bee Swap as a way to help our community and local environment by re-housing bees from people who don’t really enjoy their company to gardens of people who would like to have them. This avoids the use of chemicals which would kill the bee colony and not allow it to reach its sexual reproductive phase, which secures the next generation of queen bumble bees for next year.

Rehousing Bees is a Precision Job

Many families in the North East find that these new visitors have suddenly chosen their homes to host their colonies. For those not completely happy about having bees around their house, The Greenway Team has developed an innovative and safe bumblebee removal procedure to help bumblebees to continue with their natural life cycle, albeit in a different location.

This procedure is divided into 3 stages. During the initial stage, nests are located and positioned into our specially made wooden boxes and removed from the building.
During the second step, the bees are transported to their new home and we site the nest boxes into people’s gardens, allotment spaces etc, where they happily continue with their vital life cycle. The nests will suffer minimal damage and disruption using our special repositioning technique, meaning the colony will stay viable and will be able to complete its reproductive cycle, ensuring there is a new generation of queens for next spring.

Finally, bees end their life-cycle at the end of the summer and we collect back in all the boxes which were housing the bee colonies. The boxes will be perfect to be reused the next year in another Great British Bee Swap event, reducing waste and keeping our environmental impact as low as possible.

If you wish to participate in the Great British Bee Swap and want to offer up your garden as a space where we could rehouse some bumblebees its really easy, just complete the form below. You can’t guarantee that you will get bees in any given year, and if we can avoid moving the bees at all we will; but it would be great to know we have local volunteers who would like to help us protect our native bumblebee species. You won’t incur any costs for receiving the nest boxes but it would help if you made your garden bee friendly.
Thank you!

Register for The Great British Bee Swap here

    Contact Information.

  • Address
    Greenway Integrated Pest Management Ltd
    Bankfield
    Strathmore Road
    Rowlands Gill
    NE39 1HX
  • Telephone
    0191 406 2400
  • Email
    info@greenwayipm.co.uk
  • Opening Hours
    Monday - Saturday: 6.30 - 19:00
    Sunday - Closed

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