A Tesco Bags of Help award of £4,704 helped the Tarland Development Group -Bee Group, to start their own Queen Bee rearing project.

The Bee Group, which was established in 2013, has been very successful in training and encouraging new local beekeepers. There are now over 100 members and a community apiary with four hives for teaching and seven hives leased to members.

Bees are important and necessary pollinators but bee keeping is becoming increasingly challenging with a changing climate and the Varroa mite making it difficult to maintain colonies through the year. The Bee group wanted to increase resilience to these stresses and decided to start their own queen bee rearing project to supply queen bees to their growing membership, and in the process, generate some income to support their talks and mentoring programmes.

The funding enabled the group to engage the necessary expert help and support, buy incubator equipment to raise Queens by a grafting method and some empty hives to house six frame colonies which are ideal for beginners.

" This has been a fantastic learning experience for the whole group. It was a steep learning curve for us all from age three to seventy-three but we had lots of fun too. We are looking forward to next year when we will have all our equipment ready to go and can pass on our new knowledge to others in the group as well as to other bee groups in the area"
- Yvonne Davidson, Tarland Bee Group

Key Facts
Location: Tarland, Aberdeenshire
Project type: Biodiversity & Wildlife
Bags of HelpFunding: £4,704
Grantee: Tarland Development Group - Bee Group
Facebook: www.facebook.com/TarlandBeeGroup

View the printable pdf  Tarland Queen Bee Rearing Project

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Up to £2000 is available from Tesco Bags of Help to support a wide range of projects that benefit your local community. Tesco Bags of Help is administered by Groundwork working with greenspace scotland to support applicants and successful projects in Scotland. 
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