Bee health

Urban Green Infrastructure (UGI) is of growing importance as a way to mitigate the negative impacts of mass urbanisation and climate change worldwide.

A Green Roof can provide multiple benefits such as to reduce air pollution and urban heat island effects, improve water retention, and improve health and wellbeing. They also have a role to play in enhancing biodiversity and in providing food to pollinators such as honey bees which play a key role in maintaining our ecosystem.

In preliminary studies in collaboration with the School of Architecture and Aberystwyth university we have shown that Trifolium Repens (White clover) performs as well a Sedum, the current market leader, in terms of  evaporative cooling and heat flux.

Clover flowers longer than Sedum and thus has the potential to provide more food over a longer period to pollinators. They also contain antibacterial compounds capable of protecting the insects from bacterial pathogens such as American Foulbrood (AFB), a major cause of honey bee colony loss in Wales.

As part of this study we have identified a variety of clover called “Green Ice” which demonstrated significantly greater antibacterial activity against Paenibacillus larvae, the causative agent of Afb than any of the other 11 varieties  examined as part of this study. These results support the hypothesis that clover has the potential to be developed as an alternative green roof  covering to Sedum.

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