New interactive bee experience for UNESCO site

The new experience will teach people about the importance of pollinators

A new interactive experience at a UNESCO World Heritage Site teaching about the importance of bees is designed to address recent reductions in biodiversity, a director has said.

The Rowse Honey Bee Hive opened at Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, on Saturday 25 May.

The initiative gives children the opportunity to create their own little bees and look for real-life pollinators in the palace's Potager Garden.

Managing Director Roy Cox said the experience would give people the knowledge they needed to encourage pollinators into their own gardens.

The Rowse Bee Hive is the latest part of an ongoing conservation project between Blenheim Palace and Rowse Honey, which includes planting wildflowers across the Blenheim Estate and Palace Gardens to help attract more pollinators and wildlife - which Mr Cox said are indicators of "a good, healthy ecosystem".

"We are facing an alarming drop in biodiversity," said Mr Cox.

"What we are looking to do by teaching the role of pollinators... is show how we can care for the planet in a way that reverses this decline."

Children can draw their own bees as part of the interactive experience

Mr Cox said the hives were designed to support existing bee populations at Blenheim Palace.

"Encourage nature and nature will follow," he said.

"If visitors to this central hive could just take away a tiny little bit of knowledge to be able to hep them change a tiny thing in their own lives which then encourages pollinators to live... then we will begin to address some of those reversals in biodiversity."

The hives at Blenheim are designed to support the existing populations of bees

He said the new initiative had community benefits too, and that "thriving and healthy" green space are what "all of us wants".

"Healthy countryside underpins everything that we do," he said.