Bees - Pollinator Project

Making St Peter Port more pollinator-friendly

man and woman with a box of plants in a Cemetery

Have you ever been to the wildlife haven in town that is the Brothers’ Cemetery in St Peter Port? Or even heard of it? Well we’re making it even more pollinator-friendly.

You’d be forgiven for not having heard of the Brother’s Cemetery or Cimetière des Freres, as it was closed for 50 years until 2019 and is behind a gate in a small lane near the top of St Julian’s Avenue and the bottom of Candie and leads to Upland Road in St Peter Port.

Created by Franciscan Friars, it was intensively used for more than 8,000 burials in the 19th Century. Now it’s a precious urban habitat and an oasis of green.

We’ve recently been managing this semi-wild area for the benefit of pollinating insects – as part of a wider volunteer initiative to create a more bio-diverse habitat in the cemetery. Back in 2020 we sowed wildflower seeds in a pollinator patch to boost the pollinator friendly habitat and this year we’re reinvigorating the area with more pollinator-friendly flowers.

2025 habitat work
This year, our first task was to remove small squares of turf in preparation for planting back in January and this week our volunteers Gordon, Sharon and Andrew completed the job by planting over 300 pollinator friendly native plug plants.

These included Common Agrimony with its yellow star shaped flowers attractive to hoverflies and bees, Wild Carrot with flat white florets attractive to hoverflies, bees and beetles, Meadow Cranesbill with beak-like seed pods from which it gets its name and is attractive to bees, Oxeye Daisies which are attractive to moths, flies, beetles and solitary bees and Tufted Vetch with its spires of feathery looking flowers attractive to bees, butterflies and moths.

The turf was used to add to a “bee cliff” alongside the granite wall which we hope solitary mining bees will nest, in individual holes in the remaining soil.

You can visit the Cemetery at between 9am and 3pm on weekdays.

Bumblebee Art Competition Winners Announced

And we launched three new prize categories!

More than 1500 children in the Bailiwick will have their artwork displayed in an exhibition this summer as part of an education initiative run by the Pollinator Project about bumblebees. 

The art project, which is supported by Mourant for the third time, focuses on the 6 insects in the Bombus genus – bumblebees – and is on display from 6 July to 2 August in the entrance hallway, stairs and landings at the Guille-Alles Library in St Peter Port, Guernsey.  

The exhibition is the culmination of the 2024 Pollinator Project schools’ campaign and follows on from talks to over 4500 Bailiwick primary school children about the wonders of bumblebees. They all received a take-home bee identification leaflet and were invited to create their own Bumblebee from an activity sheet, designed in conjunction with Guernsey Arts.   The annual award-winning campaign reaches 21 primary schools across the Bailiwick, plus pre-schools and home-schooled children. 

Sharon Hickman, Pollinator Project education lead said: “The Pollinator Project bee competition had so many brilliantly bright and realistic bumblebees created by talented local children, and we have put all these on display at the Guille-Alles library for everyone to enjoy. It’s great to see that so many children have understood the importance of our bumblebees. We started this initiative 6 years ago and to have a record number of entries proves how popular this competition is with pupils, parents and teachers alike.

Sharon continued: “There are so many amazing bee artworks on display at the Guille-Alles Library over the next few weeks. There are many inventive entries, covered with seeds and natural materials, painted, collaged or even sewn or crocheted. The attention to detail of how the different bees look is a joy to see. Come and see if you can spot your child’s artwork and have some fun taking a photo in our selfie bee and flower photo frame – and maybe get a nature book out at the same time. It’s all free and it’s a real spectacle.”

Competition winners

Three children have won a prize for their school, either £500, £250 or £100 worth of vouchers for GROW Ltd so that they can create or expand their own pollinator patch. These three children will also receive individual prizes – a personalised t-shirt of their bee design, a framed copy of their artwork, and a voucher for the environmental website NHBS. 

The competition judge was Helen Wyatt, Partner at Mourant, who said: “I was blown away by the overall standard of entries. Winner Samuel Bouwen Smith’s entry stood out particularly due to the accuracy and the highly proficient pencil shading of a Common Carder Bee. Samuel is 9 and attends Castel School.

“The second prize was won by Sibbie, age 7, from Forest School, who entered a flower-filled conservation garden image on her bee, with the message ‘Save our bees’.

“Iyal Nishanth, age 4, of Amherst School, won third prize as I loved the use of colour and texture within a collage of poppy seeds, rice for wings, yellow split peas and red lentils.

“Congratulations to the winners and to all the children who took part – it was a very tough job judging the entries as everyone had done a fantastic job with their bees.”

Three extra prizes were awarded this year, with Emilie Prigent (aged 10) from Le Rondin school winning the Special Education Needs Prize for her Buff-tailed Bumblebee in mixed media with incredible attention to detail with fabric wings and a textured bee abdomen.

Another new category for pre-schools has been added too – as more and more pre-schools focus on nature and want to get involved in the competition. So, Reuben Attwool, age 4, from Little Bears Nature Pre-School won the Pre-school Prize for his representation of an Early Bumblebee as a collage of paint, wood, lentils and seaweed.

The Barry Wells Prize has been created by the family of the Pollinator Project’s co-founder and President in honour of his work for the charity and his award-winning wildlife photography. The prize of a pair of binoculars and a nature-spotting book was awarded to a nature-inspired creation by Evie Ogier, age 8, from Castel School.

Children encourage adults to participate in conservation

The next step in the annual campaign is about conservation – feeding local bumblebees. Every child that submitted their art for the competition has been provided a packet of pesticide-free seeds to sow their own ‘pollinator-friendly flower mix’ in their garden or planter at home this summer. The aim is to encourage children and their families to increase the habitat and food source for more local beneficial insects. Children can also watch the plants grow into food sources for the insects they learn about in school.

Sharon explains: “Our sponsor Mourant supported this awareness campaign by funding the design and print of the identification guides, classroom posters and most importantly purchased the pollinator-friendly seeds we give to each competition entrant. That’s 1,500 new pollinator patches being created this year which will feed many, many bumblebees (and other pollinating insects) in the Bailiwick. We hope families will enjoy seeing their flowers bloom and be able to identify the six different species of bumblebee that visit them.” 

art Barry Wells Bees bumblebees library schools

My Guernsey Future – meeting the next generation of change-makers

Maddie Lucas blogs about her involvement in My Guernsey Future where she met and inspired school pupils who are interested in climate change, policy, science and our work.

On an unusually warm Thursday this October, I had the privilege of representing the Pollinator Project at My Guernsey Future, a networking and discussion which aimed to bring young people who are concerned about climate change together with island leaders who have the power to make change.

The event, hosted at Government House by the Lieutenant-Governor of the Bailiwick of Guernsey, opened with speeches from students. The speakers and audience included pupils from primary schools, secondary, sixth form and colleges across the island. They expressed their concerns about the impacts of climate change on our island community, including sea level and temperature rise, more erratic weather events, and the knock-on effects this will have on our society.

From my own reading, I know that coastal communities like Guernsey are on the climate change frontline, facing increasing flooding, temperature, and precipitation as well as a rise in sea level, wave heights, and accelerated erosion (Zsamboky et al., 2011). Couple this with the fact that research shows children born in 2020 will experience a two to sevenfold increase in climate-change induced extreme events compared with people born in 1960 (Thiery et al., 2021), and you can understand the younger generation’s worry about the world they will inherit.

After the speeches, I was excited to have the opportunity to speak with some of the young people about the Pollinator Project’s work. I spoke to year six students about the importance of the ecosystem services our pollinating insects provide us with, for example, supporting the reproductive cycle of nearly 90% of flowering plants and pollinating our crops to provide us with food (Ollerton, 2011). I was incredibly pleased to see that the students were so passionate, well-informed, and eager to relay their own knowledge of pollinators!

I also emphasised the ability of each person to support our pollinators through individual actions including planting native wildflower patches and pollinator-friendly plants in their gardens, reducing mowing, and getting rid of pesticides such as weed killer and bug spray. Cutting out insecticides directly helps our pollinators by limiting their exposure to the accumulation of harmful toxins, which can have both lethal and sublethal effects. For example, Neonicotinoid insecticides have been found to reduce bee memory and navigational skills, fertility, and disease resistance (Lewington, 2023). Planting pollinator-friendly plants, ending herbicide use, and reducing mowing all help to increase habitat connectivity and provide our pollinators with vital food sources to support declining populations. Habitat loss and degradation have been key drivers in pollinator population declines. With approximately 30% of Guernsey’s land cover being gardens, there is a huge opportunity for local people to make a difference. Making space for pollinators wherever possible is crucial to reverse these declines.

The harmful impact of pesticides on pollinator populations is one of the issues that the Pollinator Project are proactively working to address. Dr Miranda Bane, co-director and science lead at the Pollinator Project has secured a Natural Environment Research Council grant with the University of Bristol to continue research in this area. I spoke with some of the older students about the opportunities this grant will bring to the Channel Islands over the next four years, including funding to continue the internship position I undertook this summer conducting bumblebee DNA surveys The survey data collected will be analysed to find out how Bufftailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) colony density across the islands is influenced by pesticide reduction, and to measure the presence of pesticides in our pollinators. There are also other opportunities soon to be announced, including master’s thesis projects and PhD opportunities.

The evening was thoroughly enjoyable, and Guernsey’s younger generation astounded me with the level of enthusiasm each student held about the protection and conservation of our islands. I left the event with a fierce sense of pride and no doubt in my mind that Guernsey’s future will be in safe hands. However, until the younger generation has the capability to enact change themselves, it is more vitally important than ever that we listen to their fears, use our voices, and encourage action now.

With thanks to Lieutenant-Governor Richard Cripwell for kindly hosting, and to Mia Edgworth, one of 2022’s Lieutenant-Governor’s Cadets who organised the event.

References

Lewington, R. 2023. Pocket guide to the Bumblebees of Great Britain and Ireland. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Ollerton, J., Winfree, R. and Tarrant, S., 2011. How many flowering plants are pollinated by animals?. Oikos, 120(3), pp.321-326.

Thiery, W., Lange, S., Rogelj, J., Schleussner, C.F., Gudmundsson, L., Seneviratne, S.I., Andrijevic, M., Frieler, K., Emanuel, K., Geiger, T. and Bresch, D.N., 2021. Intergenerational inequities in exposure to climate extremes. Science, 374(6564), pp.158-160.

Zsamboky, M., Fernández-Bilbao, A., Smith, D., Knight, J. and Allan, J., 2011. Impacts of climate change on disadvantaged UK coastal communities. Joseph Rowntree Foundation, pp.1-63.

Bees Dr Miranda Bane intern Maddie Lucas pesticides science

Intern blog: Being a field assistant

I’m Taliesin Valencia and I’m second-year environmental science student at the University of Stirling.

I had the chance to work with the Pollinator Project this summer, as a Field Assistant setting up a malaise trap in a fixed location, collecting samples from it each week, and then taking it down one month had elapsed.

I also helped Maddie Lucas in her field assistant intern role, where we surveyed eight total sample areas in Guernsey and another five in Sark. The purpose of these surveys was to take a small tarsal sample of Bombus terrestris, aka the Buff-tailed bumblebee, in a long-term project that will monitor the impacts of pesticide use across these two Channel Islands. This DNA sample will also enable us to determine how many unique bee colonies there are on the island. Our data is part of seven years of sampling data, which should correlate with the strides in the reduction of pesticide use that the Pollinator Project has achieved. Hopefully, we will see the buff-tail species population increase too!

I have always been interested in the environment around me; and from a young age I preferred non-fiction books about the different ecosystems and species inhabiting our planet. Throughout high school, this interest deepened when I began to study biology at a higher level. The inner workings of various ecosystems and how each species fits into a particular niche have always fascinated me.

The climate crisis and increasing awareness of our atmosphere led me to aim for an environmental science degree early in my academic career and I aspire to become an environmental consultant later in my career.

This experience with the Pollinator Project has been excellent, and I am very much looking forward to working with the charity again in the future.

Bees intern science Volunteer

First of its kind research programme comes to the Channel Islands

A collaboration between the Pollinator Project and the University of Bristol has secured a near £1 million grant from the UK to study Channel Island pollinators.

Dr Miranda Bane, who grew up on Guernsey, will be leading the work in Guernsey, Jersey, Alderney and Sark and will be looking at the abundance and diversity of pollinators across the islands.

The research is unique in studying what happens to the number and variety of pollinators in the real world as pesticide use reduces. It’s the first in the world to do this on an entire island and it will also showcase the Channel Islands for the first time as a world leader in this research area.

Miranda said: “I have always been inspired by the beautiful nature on our island. To be able to bring research expertise on pollinators back to the islands, to help protect and enhance our natural environment, has been my goal since choosing an academic career. It has taken almost 4 years, a lot of hard work and the invaluable support of so many people to secure this research grant. I am so grateful for all the support and so excited to be working on my dream project.”

Professor Jane Memmott from the University of Bristol is head of the UK research team who will regularly visit the islands. Professor Memmott said: “Islands can be viewed as microcosms of the world, large enough to be realistic, but small enough to be tractable for study. And I’m really excited to be working with a team on the Channel Islands for the next four years on pollinators and pesticides.”

The funding enables four years of research on pollinating insects across Guernsey, Jersey, Alderney, and Sark. It’s a long-term look at these beneficial insects including bees, butterflies, wasps, flies, beetles and moths and aims to answer questions about the impacts of pesticides on their numbers and will help support future conservation efforts.

Opportunities available in 2024

The money which is being provided by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) will create a number of on-island career opportunities from early next year including a full-time research technician post, annual research internships, a PhD position, and several Master’s degree study opportunities. It will also fund DNA analysis and testing for the presence of pesticides in pollinators through a world-class Canadian laboratory.

Work has been going on since 2019 in preparation with teams of citizen scientists led by Miranda collecting baseline data. In addition States Works have stopped using glyphosate and the States of Guernsey’s 2022 restriction on the sale of glyphosate products have all contributed to a reduction in use.

Meet Maddie: our Field Intern helping us research bumblebees DNA

girl kneeling at bench doing bumblebee fieldwork

My name is Madison Lucas, and this summer I am working with the Pollinator Project as their 2023 field assistant intern.

I graduated in 2022 from the University of Leeds with a master’s degree in Ecology and Conservation Biology. Growing up in Guernsey fostered my love for nature, and now that I’m back living on island, I’m keen to use my studies and contribute towards protecting our incredible island ecosystem.

In my spare time, I am a self-taught naturalist. I’m currently in the process of compiling a personal pan-species list – a ‘compendium’ of sorts where I record every species I have seen. My interest in naturalism developed more during the pandemic, when the Pollinator Project sent out a leaflet showing all the butterfly species that breed in Guernsey. I learnt how to identify the butterflies using the leaflet and spent that summer attempting to see at least one individual of each species. The most most exciting sighting was seeing the Glanville Fritillary, a species I had been taught about at university, but never seen.

Now, I have come full circle, and have the privilege of working with the charity which contributed so greatly to the development of my passion for our environment!

This summer I am conducting bee surveys across Guernsey and Sark. The DNA samples I collect will be used to monitor the density of bumblebee colonies on the islands, ultimately allowing the team at the Pollinator Project to determine the impact of pesticide use on our local bumblebees. Along the way, I’m hoping to find a few species that are stubbornly missing from my Guernsey list – namely the Vestal Cuckoo bumblebee, and the Early Bumblebee.

More than anything, it’s great to get back into what every ecologist loves the most – field work!

Chouet’s Orange-legged furrow bees could be at risk

Barry Wells - Pollinator Project co-founder

Bee species that are rare in Guernsey could be at risk if quarrying starts at Chouet headland.

Our founder and local bee expert Barry Wells said: ‘While modern quarrying does factor in environmental concerns and a bit of off-setting measures, if quarrying at Chouet goes ahead, there’s still a risk of losing important pollinating insects including rare bees that are probably only found on this headland,’ he said.

The Pollinator Project is concerned for the viability of two bee populations at Chouet headland should plans progress to begin quarrying there.

The bee species found on the headland include the Potter flower bee (anthophora retusa), which is now extremely rare in the UK, but widespread at Chouet, and the orange-legged furrow bee (lasioglossum xanthopus), which is very rare and declining in the UK.

The Environment & Infrastructure (E&I) committee has decided – by a majority – to recommend the establishment of a new quarry at the Vale headland, once the current quarry at Les Vardes has been exhausted, which is expected to be in 2023.

In its policy letter, the committee admits that the plan would result in ‘unavoidable localised ecological and environmental impacts’ but argues that this can be offset by measures elsewhere to enhance biodiversity. E&I president Lindsay De Sausmarez has said she would like to see off-setting measures – known as biodiversity net gain – being focused on the immediate area as far as possible.

Quarrying company Ronez has verbally committed to protect the perimeter of the site, along the public coastal footpaths – which may protect the bee habitats – unless they are disturbed by the rock blasting noise, dust and vibrations.

Mr Wells agrees: ‘I think that if we can preserve the habitat around the periphery of the headland, which should be possible, these insects will survive,’ he said. ‘But I am concerned that the impact on pollinators may be difficult to mitigate if this precaution is not taken.’

‘Some people naively think bees will just move, but they live at that site because it’s best for them and if machinery destroys their nests, that may wipe out an already precious bee population,’ he said.

‘We need to protect those areas that are vital for wildlife’.

The Pollinator Project has also requested that the environmental impact assessment report covers invertebrates and takes into account the local knowledge of the sighting of these bees – not recorded anywhere else in Guernsey.

More news…

Barry Wells Bees Chouet