Bee-spoke: Rolls-Royce celebrates World Bee Day

In celebration of World Bee Day on the 20^th of May, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars joined conservationists, naturalists, growers, and apiculturists around the globe to support the special day.

World Bee Day isn’t just any holiday. It aims to strengthen measures to protect the rapidly declining population of bees, which are vital pollinators for almost 90% of the world’s wild flowering plant species and more than 75% of global food crops. Despite their obvious importance in supporting food security and biodiversity, these little critters are under significant threat worldwide from intensive and monocultural farming practices, land-use change and habitat loss, pesticides and rising temperatures linked to climate change.

So how exactly does Rolls-Royce tie into this situation? The British marque is actively involved in helping to safeguard these essential, remarkable and highly vulnerable creatures. In 2017, the company established an Apiary at the home of Rolls-Royce in Goodwood, West Sussex. The Apiary is home to around 250,000 English honeybees, which reside in six traditional English-crafted wooden beehives. As well as foraging on the 42-acre Rolls-Royce site with its half-a-million trees, shrubs and wildflowers, together with eight acres of sedum plants growing on the manufactory’s "living roof," the bees roam around the surrounding 12,000-acre Goodwood Estate, at the heart of the South Downs National Park.

Each year, "The Rolls-Royce of Honey"’ is meticulously harvested by local specialists and served to guests of the marque, including customers commissioning their motor cars in the company’s Atelier suite.

The United Nations designated May 20 as World Bee Day to mark the birthday of Slovenian artist, designer, and apiculturist Anton Janša (1734-1773). Janša is considered the father of modern beekeeping as he pioneered many methods that beekeepers still use today. In Janša’s A Full Guide to Beekeeping, published posthumously in 1775, he declared: “Amongst all God's beings there are none so hard working and useful to man with so little attention needed for its keep as the bee.”

Richard Carter, director of global communications at Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, said, “As enthusiastic beekeepers ourselves, we’re looking forward to supporting World Bee Day, and helping to raise awareness of the real, present threats facing this fascinating and incredibly important species. We all depend on bees and other pollinators to produce much of our food, and safeguard and enhance the biodiversity of the world around us.

“The Apiary is a project dear to the hearts of everyone at Rolls-Royce. World Bee Day is a reminder that as well as helping to conserve the UK’s bee population and benefiting our local farmers, growers and wildlife, we’re part of something much bigger and of fundamental importance.”

Photos from Rolls-Royce

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