st mary's secret garden · pedestrianised for 3 days and traffic replaced with community...

St Mary's Secret Garden Registered charity 1152027 / Company limited by guarantee 05987612

50 Pearson Street London E2 8EL Tel no 02077392965

Email: [email protected]

www.stmaryssecretgarden.org.uk

Twitter @stmarysgarden

“Growing together - Wellbeing through Gardening”

The Waggle

News from St Marys Secret Garden Bees

2019 was a year of change for the bees and the organisation that cares for and manages them.

Over the winter of 2018/2019 the Golden Company ceased trading and disbanded, ending 9 productive years

of working with bees to better the lives and job prospects of young people. The reigns were handed over to

St Marys Secret Garden who have now received and taken ownership of all the Golden Companies assets.

Corporate clients supporting the Golden Co have now all been transferred over to St Marys.

This handover represents a new era for the Bees, our clients and opens new possibilities for all involved. As

a registered charity of 25 years St Marys Secret Garden is financially more robust, has stronger governance

and is better positioned to apply for funding to continue the valuable work begun by the Golden Co. all those

years ago.

Since taking over from the Golden Co the Garden has been successful in obtaining funding from Thrive

London and the Mayor of London’s office enabling us to deliver an exciting new project called the ‘Buzzin’

club.

About our Buzzin club The Buzzin club launched in May and works with teenagers and young adults to improve their mental health

and wellbeing through beekeeping. Participants have been coming to the garden every Monday to participate

in beekeeping activities, learn new skills and gain confidence. The young people have had the opportunity to

learn about food hygiene, develop woodwork skills, Learn about horticulture and flexed their marketing and

selling skills selling hive products manning our honey stall at street markets and other events.

In August our funders Thrive London and Team London made this video about the project https://twitter.com/ThriveLDN/status/1173888905151700992?s=20

As well as helping us look after our bees the Buzzin club have also been helping to grow plants and make

bee hotels for our project on the Nomura roof top.

News from the London Stock Exchange Hives

In May we relocated the two WBC hives from the roof of Paternoster Square to the garden. This decision

was taken after talks with LSE about the welfare of their bees. It was felt they would be better off being

relocated to the garden where the area is greener and has more forage to offer the bees. There’s been an

influx of companies around Paternoster Square acquiring hives in the past year, Amazon and Hogan Lovels

just down the road now have bees on their roof tops too. It was felt the bees were not making much surplus

honey because there simply wasn’t enough flower resources in the area to sustain all the hives.

Swarms on the nearby Holborn Viaduct in June were assumed to be from the LSE hives and Mark was

called upon to collect them but by this time our LSE hives had already been relocated to Hackney so the

swarms were not from our bees. We pride ourselves on being socially responsible to our hive hosts and not

allowing our bees to become a nuisance.

Before removing them from the roof top the Stock Exchange CEO came to visit the hives and learn more

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.stmaryssecretgarden.org.uk/

https://twitter.com/ThriveLDN/status/1173888905151700992?s=20







about the bees. This was the final staff hive visit we delivered at Paternoster Square and brought an end to a

memorable 8 years of beekeeping at the site.

After the move to the garden the bees were temporarily housed in alternative boxes whilst their WBC hives

underwent a makeover. The wood work was scraped clean of wax and propolis and scorched with a gas gun

to sterilise them. The outer lifts were then painted and repairs made to their gabbled roofs. Once Finished the

bees were then moved back into their luxurious accommodations and went on to produce 160 jars of honey

which was delivered to LSE in September.

The hives remain sponsored by the LSE group and their staff are able to visit the garden to participate in the

weekly inspections.

Our Buzzin club participants have been assisting Mark with the weekly hive checks and in June reared some

new queens from the LSE bees. These Queens were then used to replace some of the aging Queens in our

other hives and were also used to demonstrate the rearing process on our Queen Rearing workshop we held

in June with Capital Growth.

Our LSE bees looked very healthy going into winter and in mid-December our Buzzin group gave them an

oxalic acid treatment to remove any Varroa Mites parasitizing the bees. At the same time they gave the bees

a Christmas gift in the form of a sugar cake – insurance that they won’t run out of food over the winter.

Above: The LSE hives after a lick of paint









News from our Chancery Lane Hives.

Our Chancery Lane bees on the 5th Floor rooftop of law firm Lewis Silkin had a very productive year this

year. For the first time in memory both hives produced a modest honey crop and 20 kilos of honey was

produced between them. In recent years we’ve had problems at this site with reoccurring Nosema outbreaks

– a fungal like pathogen which causes dysentery among the bees. This year we seem to have finally

eradicated the problem and the bees got off to a flying start following a change of boxes and comb change

onto new frames in April.

Above left: the Lewis Silkin bee hives and above right: Harvesting the honey

In 2018 the bees here produced London’s ‘best urban honey’ at the national honey show and in 2019 their

honey was highly commended when entered by our Buzzin Club participant Junyan. We put the award

winning honey down to the amazing flowers the bees visit in nearby Inner Temple Gardens. In May Mark

attended their spring fair and took along his observation hive with live bees to entertain their visitors and

talk to the public about how they can help bees by planting for them. The theme of the spring fair was

celebrating trees (the garden has one of the best collections of trees from around the world in London) and

we took along an information display about which trees are important food resources for Honey Bees.

Later in May we hosted a group of 15 Lewis Silkin staff who came to St Marys Secret Garden to volunteer

for the day and learn a bit more about other services the charity delivers.









Staff helped to paint our therapy shed, Mend and re-paint some of the beehives, make bee hive frames and

undertook gardening tasks alongside some of our disabled gardening volunteers.

Above: Some of the Lewis Silkin staff show off their frame building skills during a volunteering session at

St Marys Secret Garden.

In August we ran a honey extraction demonstration at Lewis Silkin in their staff canteen. Many of the

company’s staff dropped by to learn how the honey is extracted, and some of their staff assisted in

harvesting the honey from the hives and then returning the boxes once the honey had been spun out. A few

weeks later we delivered the 200+ jars of honey to Lewis Silkin which was sold to staff in their canteen.

We’re told the honey flew off the shelves this year because we took honey from both the hives and had 2

very different types of honey, one was light and sweet with a citrus tang and the other was dark, thicker with

a cinder toffee tang to it. The dark honey was particularly in demand.









In early September we took part in the Chancery Lane Associations ‘Lunch Time Streets’ event which was

jointly organised by Corporation of London Highways Team. The event saw Chancery lane temporarily

pedestrianised for 3 days and traffic replaced with community stalls, food and drink vendors and live

entertainment. St Marys took our Buzzin club participants along to help man the honey stall selling some of

the Lewis Silkin Honey, our other honeys from around London, beeswax bandles and beeswax food wraps

that they had made.

The bees are now tucked away for winter having had their December Varroa treatments and we look

forward to resuming regular inspections come spring.

Above; Our Buzzin trainee Charlie prices up jars of honey under the supervision of our market stall manager

Liam at the Chancery Lane ‘Lunch Time Street’s market event.









News from our hives at Nomura.

The bees at Nomura have had their best year ever this past Year. Both hives have done really well producing

plenty of honey and have done so well they have had to be split to prevent them from swarming.

Like our hives at the other corporate sites they’ve all been treated to new clean hive boxes this year which

gave them a good start to the year. The bees at Nomura have benefitted from all the spring bulbs planted on

their roof in previous years which provides them with an abundance of pollen early in the year. This is really

important as pollen is the bee’s only source of protein which is essential in production of new bees to

replace the aging workers.

Between June and October this year we delivered over 20 bee hive visits accommodating almost 100 staff.

We also accommodated 2 groups of students who came to visit the bees and produced 2 films highlighting

efforts in the city to conserve pollinators through planting and practising responsible urban beekeeping.

Above: The Buzzin club visit Nomura’s roof to help harvest the honey crop

This year Nomura has contracted us to manage their 11th floor green roof for them. We’ve agreed to manage

the roof, enhancing the planting and creating new habitats to cater for wildlife. Our Buzzin Group have built









solitary bee hotels which have been delivered to the roof and grew wild flower plants which were planted on

the roof in November. We’ve also delivered 4 tonnes of soil to the roof and created some large nesting

mounds to attract wild bees which nest in burrows underground. As well as taking the buzzin club

participants to the roof to help with the improvement works we also worked with Nomura staff who

volunteered their time to help with the planting work.

Above: Some of the habitat works we’ve undertaken on the Nomura roof.









We were delighted to be recognised for our work improving the habitat in the city centre for pollinators

when were received a Bees needs award from the Department of Environment in November. Nina Swallow

the banks Environmental Manager attended the award ceremony with us which was held at the Wax

Chandlers Hall on Gresham Street.

Above: Lord Gardiner presents the Bees Needs Award to Paula and Mark at an event held at the Wax

Chandlers Hall in November. Photo by Roger Harris Photography.

This year Nomura once again invited us to take part in their annual Open Garden Squares weekend.

Participants from our Buzzin club helped to man our honey sales and bee information stall on the banks 6th

floor terrace garden. As well as selling honey we also sold adopt a bee certificates which raised money for

Nomura’s charitable causes.

We also delivered a sustainable Christmas wreath workshop for the bank in December. 20 staff attended

making their own wreath and table log whilst enjoying mulled wine and mince pies.

Mark has just finished writing our end of project report for the bank after undertaking some biological

monitoring on their roof top over the summer. 136 species of flowering plant were recorded, 55 insect

species and 15 species of bird. Highlights include finding a very rare species of Orchid and breeding Black

Redstarts – a nationally rare breeding bird.

News from the Secret Garden Hives

This year the garden has made increased usage of the apiary than they had in previous years. In the past the

apiary was underutilised and in 2019 more effort was made to use the apiary as an educational tool to bring

in new and different types of groups and beneficiaries.

As well as using the apiary to train our Buzzin participants we’ve also hosted several local schools who have

brought pupils to meet the bees, don bee suits and participate in a hive inspection. We’ve also had visits

from Hackney Play Association and a number of youth clubs.









In April, we ran a weekend introduction to beekeeping course which was attended by 9 students. Participants

on the course were mostly local but we had some participants travel from as far afield as Leicester to attend

our course. We’ve ran regular mentoring sessions in the apiary over the spring and summer where course

attendees could come along to learn more of the hands on practical elements to keeping bees.

Above: Mark inducts a group of trainee beekeepers at the St Marys Secret Garden apiary.

We then delivered a sustainable Queen Bee rearing course in June with Capital Growth. This course was

intended to offer beekeepers with some existing experience the opportunity to learn how to make additional

queens which they could use to re-queen their existing hives or use to make new colonies of bees.

In August the BBC’s ‘Out and About’ London program visited the garden to film a piece about young

beekeepers. Mark and Paula Yassin, Managing Director of St Marys Secret Garden also visited BBC

Television Centre in August with an observation hive filled with live bees to be featured on the ‘Sunday

Morning Live’ program. The program ran a feature about the health benefits of gardening, therapeutic

horticulture and how we are using beekeeping activities to improve young people’s wellbeing.









We currently have 6 hives of bees at the garden including the 2 LSE hives and we feel that this is the

maximum that we want to maintain at the garden. This provides us with enough hives for our raining and

outreach needs but doesn’t place too much competition on the bees to find sufficient food to feed themselves

and provide us with a decent honey crop.

This year the gardens hives produced around 50kg of honey. Some of our participants from our Buzzin club

entered our honey in the national honey show and we won 2 runner up prizes and a very highly commended.

Our young people Khalid, Junyan and Sharrif were thrilled with their wins. These sorts of successes go a

long way to boosting confidence in our young participants and improving their wellbeing.

Above: Our Buzzin participant Sharif Musah beams with pride as he shows off his prize winning honey









As always the garden is open Monday to Friday 9-5 and our corporate sponsors and their staff are more than

welcome to visit the garden. We’re also more than happy to accommodate groups of our sponsors

employees who wish to volunteer at the garden. Please don’t hesitate to contact Paula if you would like to

arrange a volunteering day or schedule a visit to the apiary to see a hive inspection and learn about the bees.

Written By Mark Patterson, the St Marys Secret Garden Beekeeper



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