Shropshire Beekeepers Association receives
The King’s Award for Voluntary Service
Today Shropshire Beekeepers Association has been awarded The King’s Award for Voluntary Service for 2024. This is the highest award a local voluntary group can receive in the UK as it is the MBE for the volunteer groups.
We are one of 281 local charities, social enterprises and voluntary groups to receive the prestigious award this year. The King’s Award for Voluntary Service aims to recognise outstanding work by local volunteer groups to support their communities. It was created in 2002 to celebrate Her Majesty The late Queen’s Golden Jubilee and, was continued following the accession of His Majesty The King. 2024 marks the second year of The King’s Award for Voluntary Service.
The award recognizes that since 2016 we have restored and transformed the historic one-hectare Conduit Head site and its historic buildings into a lively base and beekeeping training centre for our 350 members. As a visitor centre, it is a community resource dedicated to the honeybee, pollinators, and the complex ecosystems to which they are essential and upon which they depend. Wildlife has been encouraged by planting wildflower meadows, hedgerows, a traditional orchard, herb garden, shrubbery, and flower bed; a marshland area, wildlife pond and stream revived; bird boxes, bat boxes, hedgehog hotels and log piles for reptiles and insects, installed.
We will receive the award crystal and certificate from Mrs Anna Turner JP, Lord-Lieutenant of Shropshire in 2025.
SBKA Chair Glyn Williams said: “We are proud of what we have created and feel both humbled and energized by the recognition of the phenomenal effort of our volunteers conferred by the King’s Award for Voluntary Service. Although we have restored vandalized buildings and developed the grounds it would not have been possible without the dedication and hard work of our volunteers and the support of our sponsors and advisors. The award gives further impetus to the development of the site for the enjoyment and learning of future generations.”
More information on the recipients and the Award can be found at
https://kavs.dcms.gov.uk/
BBC Bargain Hunt at the apiary
When a researcher from the BBC Bargain Hunt programme contacted us asking to speak to someone about our apiary and the work we have done restoring the site with a possibility of filming, a whole sequence of events unfolded.
We wanted to promote beekeeping and showcase our apiary and the work we have done in restoring an overgrown, derelict and vandalised site with a history of water supply dating back to the 16th century. We agreed a programme for the filming which would involve SBKA members talking about their volunteering work at the apiary.
On 29th April presenter Natasha Raskin Sharp and a crew of two camera operators, a sound recorder, producer, and production assistant arrived at 07.30 and filming started. Natasha made everyone feel at ease and the experience was enjoyable. We were able to talk about the apiary, managing bees, the history of the site and beekeeping in general. Other volunteers were filmed working in the apiary and Natasha got involved with various activities such as bottling honey, gardening, and with our resident artists at work. The programme was made as part of The Big Help Out and aired on 7th June on BBC1, and the link below will take you to view it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0j2bl3m
HM Queen Camilla’s visit to Shrewsbury
Shropshire Beekeepers were invited to put on a display at the Shrewsbury Farmers’ Market on Wednesday 27th March 2024 for the visit of Her Majesty Queen Camilla as HMQ wished to talk to beekeepers on her visit. Our display included information boards showing the Conduit Head history and how we had developed the derelict site into our teaching apiary and visitor centre, and we also included displays of Shropshire honey and wax candles.
Queen Camilla visits Shrewsbury
The queen stopped at the display and spoke to all of the SBKA members present. We showed her the work of our volunteers in developing the apiary and discussed her interest in beekeeping and her involvement in the Bees for Development charity. Her Majesty talked about her own bees at Highgrove and showed us her broches of bees chosen especially for the day. Before she continued her visit, Rita Cliffe presented Her Majesty with 2lbs of honey from the SBKA apiary. The Queen thanked us and said how much she enjoyed tasting different honeys. Included in Rita’s hand-made presentation bag were SBKA Conduit Head leaflets which we hope she might show His Majesty the King.
Its Your Neighbourhood
SBKA wins highest level ‘Outstanding’ award from Royal Horticultural Society. On the 29th of September 2023 Dave Bourne and John Adams attended a presentation ceremony at the Manor Hotel, Meriden. The ceremony was for The Heart of England in Bloom, It’s Your Neighbourhood Awards which is part of the Royal Horticultural Society’s Britain in Bloom competition.
Some 150 people attended the award ceremony from groups all over the Midlands area, and from groups as diverse as from sheltered accommodation, allotment societies, municipal parks managers, ‘Friends of’ groups etc. The Its Your Neighbourhood Awards are given following an assessment, judging against three criteria of Community Participation, Environmental Responsibility, and Gardening Achievement. The Conduit Head Apiary was assessed in July, and we did not know the outcome until the presentation day.
SBKA wins highest level ‘Outstanding’ award from Royal Horticultural Society
There are five levels of awards: Establishing, Improving, Advancing, Thriving, and Outstanding. SBKA were awarded an Outstanding Award, achieving between 86-100% of the possible score. It was good to get recognition of the work all the volunteers have done at Conduit Head, and our outreach to local communities. The awarded Certificate is now proudly displayed in the Brian Goodwin Beekeeping Centre.
Grant awarded
During a visit to Conduit Head apiary, Chris Lemon, the Shrewsbury Town Councillor for the Radbrook Ward, was impressed with what the Association volunteers had achieved at the apiary since 2016 when we took over the custodianship of the site. He suggested that we should apply, with his support, for a Local Councillor Grant to carry out work at the site that would benefit the local community.
Given Chris is a Green Party Councillor we applied for £500 to plant a shrubbery of pollinator plants, to seed the areas in front of the hives with a local meadow mix, and to build two bee hotels. Our application was successful, and with a £100 contribution from SBKA funds we have started to prepare the ground and seed. The call volunteers to dig the area in the apiary and move c 5 tonnes of woodchip for weed suppression at the shrubbery site resulted in a good turnout for five morning sessions.
We are now starting to plant shrubs and have seeded half of the apiary meadow, the other half to be dug next winter. Last year we planted several hundred snowdrops – this this year they have flowered, in future years we can expect a better show.
Fish release
January saw Harry Ballard and Shannon Walround, from the Environment Agency, release twenty 1-year old Crucian carp into the stream at the Conduit Head Apiary. The release was part of a nationwide project to protect the genetic diversity of species. Crucian carp are being released in to isolated waterbodies where there are no other fish are present, preventing any interbreeding.
Conduit Head was identified as a possible release site by Stu Gamble, another EA employee, who came to the apiary to see what his father Paul had been doing on a Wednesday and Saturday morning for the last 6 years. Harry visited the site and agreed. The first stage was to get the water body registered with CEFAS (Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science), then a Live Fish Movement Permit from the EA, which we were granted in August 2023. Then we waited for the fish to arrive from the EA’s fish farm at Calverton, Nottingham. Coarse fish are bred at Calverton to restock after pollution incidents, hence the wait until it was necessary to bring fish to the river Severn catchment. As well as being part of a national biodiversity project, the fish will be another attraction for visitors to the apiary.