Honey bees on their way to Basingstoke College of Technology (From Andover Advertiser)

Two members of staff at BCoT training to be beekeepers

7:00pm Sunday 10th March 2013 in Basingstoke By Emily Roberts, Chief Reporter

THERE will soon be a real buzz about a Basingstoke college.

Two members of staff at Basingstoke College of Technology (BCoT) are being trained by Basingstoke and District Beekeepers Association in the coming months, before a hive for honey bees is installed at the college, in Worting Road this month.

The hive will be placed on the roof of the cafe at the college, and will be accessed via a window.

Anthony Bravo, principal at BCoT, said: “If bees become extinct then we are in trouble environmentally. My degree originally was in environmental science so I have always had a soft spot for the environment.”

Honey bees are under threat worldwide because of viruses against which they have no natural defences.

Very many colonies in the wild have died out and without beekeepers to care for them, honey bees could disappear altogether.

Mr Bravo said bees produce better honey when based near a town, because of the variety of flowers they can collect pollen from, and so BCoT offers a good location for a hive.

Honey produced by the bees will be used by catering students in the college restaurant and in the canteen.

Other students will learn how to look after the bees, with help from Lauren McCann, an IT trainer at the college who will be trained as a beekeeper.

She said: “Anthony suggested the college bee project at a time when I was thinking about looking into beekeeping myself.

“There’d been a flurry of bee-related items in the media, focused especially on how bees are currently struggling, their numbers dwindling and the effects of this on the ecosystem and wider environment and how they could do with some help from us humans.”

She added: “They need a fair bit of looking after so it is a big commitment. But we can’t wait for it to start.”