The Hive: no. 3

World Bee Day seems like a good day to have a bee-related edition of The Hive, my round-up of positive (solarpunk) eco news stories. The UN designated 20 May as World Bee Day in 2017, to raise awareness of the importance of pollinators, the threats they face and their contribution to sustainable development.

A 7-mile-long ‘bee corridor‘ is being planted in north London this year, to boost the number of pollinating insects. The wildflower meadows will be put in place in 22 of Brent Council’s parks in north London. [That article goes on to say that there are about 250 species of bees, but it doesn’t say that’s only in the UK. Worldwide, there are more than 25,000 known species of bees, organised in seven families. Bees are found on every continent except Antarctica, in every habitat on the planet that contains insect-pollinated flowering plants.

Californian bees will welcome the fire poppies that are popping up after last year’s devastating wildfires. Fire poppies, Papaver californicum, are a rare and elusive species that only grows on scorched earth; they come in orange, red and brick red. Fire poppy seeds will only germinate after they have been exposed to smoke; for other ‘fire follower’ species, heat or charred soil are the signal to get growing.

A community development worker has invented a credit card-style reviver for bees containing three sachets of sugar solution, which can be placed beside tired insects to feed them. Each card contains three indentations containing a beekeepers’ formula, secured by foil-backed stickers which can be peeled off. Dan Harris has set up Bee Saviour Behaviour, a not-for-profit co-operative, to make the revivers, which he hopes to source from recycled plastic cards. If he hits his £8,000