Creating a bee friendly city

Community Gateway in association with Pollen8Cymru, the School of Pharmacy, Student Volunteering Cardiff and local Grangetown primary schools have created a pollinator garden at the Grange Bowls Pavilion.

Students and local residents have been working hard to plant a 'bee friendly' garden by cultivating plants that are both favoured by pollinators and identified as encouraging the production of antibacterial honey. Local primary school children have been engaging with the project and learning through hands-on activities about biodiversity, pollination and microbiology from scientists and from each other.

The School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Science at Cardiff University has been heavily involved with similar projects around the city creating pollinator spaces at the Students Union, around Redwood Building and on the roof of the St David's shopping centre. As well as being a fun learning experience for all involved there is also a very serious research element behind the project as Professor of Microbiology Les Baillie explains: "There is a need to identify new antibiotics because numerous species of bacteria have become resistant to traditional antibiotics." Researchers from the School, in collaboration with colleagues from the National Botanic Garden of Wales, have been working to identify plant-derived drugs to treat antibiotic resistant hospital pathogens.

The focus of the pollinator garden that has been completed at the Bowls Pavilion is now on the honey and bee hives will be introduced around the garden in the next few weeks to encourage bees onto the plants. It is hoped that the bees will then begin to produce honey with antibacterial properties that can be harvested and used as part of the research project.

For further information or to find out how you can get involved with the project please contact us: communitygateway@cardiff.ac.uk