Trinity launches Campus Pollinator Plan and asks public to ‘Name Our Queen Bee’

Posted on: 11 April 2017

Researchers at Trinity College Dublin are asking the public to help name a Royal VIP after installing a beehive that will house tens of thousands of honeybees on campus.

The ‘Name Our Queen Bee’ competition is being launched today in tandem with Trinity’s Campus Pollinator Plan, which supports the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan’s (AIPP) main objectives by making Trinity pollinator-friendly and raising awareness about pollinators.

The Trinity Campus Pollinator Plan (CPP)

The CPP (see https://naturalscience.tcd.ie/pollinator/ for full details) will — along with a network of other green areas in the city — help restore urban sites that are important for a range of bee species in the centre of Dublin.

Among the CPP’s plans are the identification and protection of pollinator-friendly areas; the planting of suitable plants to support pollinators; the addition of ‘bee hotels’ for solitary bees and protection of sites for ground-nesting bees.

Professor in Botany at Trinity, Jane Stout, led the development of the AIPP and the CPP.

Professor Stout said: “As well as further strengthening Trinity’s research capability by allowing us to study our urban bees and consider the factors influencing pollinator-plant interactions and population changes, the Campus Pollinator Plan and our bees will support Trinity’s sustainability ideals.”

“Similar actions are being undertaken across various sectors — by community groups, local authorities, businesses, farmers and across transport networks, for example. By working together we can collectively take steps to reverse pollinator declines in Ireland, and restore healthy populations that contribute to our economy, wealth, health, and well-being, and which support other wildlife in the wider landscape.”

Pollinators are important in Ireland — not just for agricultural production of crops such as apples, strawberries, and oilseed rape, but also for the majority of wild plants, which create the wild habitats that Ireland is famous for. Worryingly, there have been global declines in many species of bees and important knock-on consequences for pollination services in recent years.

Trinity’s Queen Bee and the ‘Name Our Queen Bee’ competition

Trinity’s Queen Bee is the matriarch of the hive. She lays up to 1,500 eggs per day, up to 1 million during her lifetime. At its peak, the honeybee colony can have up to 60,000 workers (females) and several hundred drones (males). The workers act as nurses, cleaners and food collectors for the colony: they fly from the hive and visit flowers to collect pollen, to feed to the larvae, and nectar to store as honey, so that they colony has food all year round.

To enter the competition, people simply need to tweet their suggested names to @tcddublin making sure they use the hashtag #TrinityQueen. Alternatively, suggestions can be made via Facebook here, or via the following form https://campusbuzz.blog/competition/. The competition runs from today until 12 noon on Thursday May 11.  

Soon after the closing date, a panel comprising Trinity Provost Dr Patrick Prendergast, botany researchers, beekeepers and students will choose a winning name. A jar of the first harvested honey and a copy of The Bee Book will be reserved for the winner.

The idea to run the competition was inspired by a similar one organised by the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden.  

Susie Bioletti, keeper of Trinity’s bees, said: “A major goal of both the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan and Trinity’s Campus Pollinator Plan is to raise awareness around pollinators and their value to society and to Ireland’s ecosystems. We hope that by asking the public to name our Queen via this competition we will open eyes and minds and encourage even greater engagement in the pursuit of supporting our pollinators.”

To keep people informed on the progress of the hive over the coming months, Susie and co-beekeeper Marcus Phelan, will be blogging about “The buzz from the hive” every month on www.campusbuzz.blog.

The blog will also feature articles from students and researchers from Trinity and beyond. In addition, the team will be posting interesting #pollinatorfacts.

The All-Ireland Pollinator Plan (2015-2020) lists 81 actions to be undertaken by 68 public and private bodies to support our pollinators. It has already received widespread support from government and non-government organisations, and from the public, and has been recognised internationally as an example of best practice.

The launch of the CPP forms part of a series of events for Trinity Week 2017 (Monday April 10th – Thursday April 14th), during which people are invited to discover, understand and act on our health in a changing world.