Urban Bees was invited by patent law firm, Reddie & Grose, to run bee-related events for employees in its London, Cambridge and Munich offices during 2023.

Events included:

• introducing staff to our 270 bee species in the UK, why they are so important, threats facing them and how to help them. (Slide show and talk – the Munich office zoomed in)
• showing staff simple steps they can take to help bees by planting flowers for bees at home even if they only have a window box – the key is to have something flowering sequentially from early spring to late autumn (slide show and talk – in London and Cambridge and Munich zoomed in)
• assembling a flat-pack bee hotel to create a nesting site for Red mason bees to check into and learning more about the bees that will use it, their life cycle, and where to locate your hotel and how to attract the bees (workshops in London and Cambridge).

Urban bees also:

• highlighted a bee of the month for the Reddie & Grose social media feeds
• did a Reddie & Grose podcast about bees, their importance for ecosystems, business and us.
• introduced employees to a citizen science volunteering project to help bees – the Bumblebee Conservation Trust BeeWalk monitoring scheme

Aims of the partnership were to:

• educate Reddie & Grose employees about the amazing bees on our doorstep, why they are so important to healthy ecosystems, mitigating climate change, business and us, and simple steps we can take to help them.
• try to involve other tenants in the Whitechapel office in London to learn about bees, and to give their staff a chance to help bees at home.
• try to make the Whitechapel office more bee-friendly by improving the planting and installing bee hotels through involving the sustainability manager and the facilities manager at Derwent London.