Supporting biodiversity, one beehive at a time

Our stand at this year’s European Captives Forum in Luxembourg is made from recycled or recyclable materials. Everything that we’ve used at this conference will be reused or recycled, to minimise our impact on the environment.

Protecting bees

The jars of Chubb branded honey that we’re giving away at the European Captives Forum this year are the product of the beehives we sponsor in the Netherlands. Our hives are in the small village of Alphen, with a local population of only 1,600 residents. We chose this village because of the residents’ commitment to protecting biodiversity.

The Chubb beehives were supplied by the company Liquid Nature and are protected and monitored by the local biodiversity group, Stichting Leefbaar Alphen Gelderland. Together with these two groups, we assessed where in the village would be suitable locations to place four Chubb hives. We decided on two places: a site in the village close to a wildflower meadow and water, and behind the village’s primary school. At each site we built two apiaries made of willow.

Involving local schoolchildren

Primary schoolchildren in Alphen are involved in the Chubb bee sponsorship project, and some children even helped to install the beehives. In school, the children are taught about the vital role that bees play in the local ecosystem and the importance of doing what we can to support bees’ continued existence. There are also glass plates installed on the beehives so that the children can see the bees’ behaviour inside the hives.

The Beep bee monitor

Liquid Nature offers an online bee monitoring platform, Beep, which digitally enables viewers to watch how the bees are behaving. Chubb is sponsoring access to Beep for Stichting Leefbaar Alphen Gelderland members and local schoolchildren in Alphen, so that they can monitor the Chubb bees’ vitality, their supply of honey, swarming tendencies and how the colony is growing. This data is also shared with Wageningen University for their research on bees.

Looking to the future

We are proud of the collaboration we’ve formed in the Netherlands with Stichting Leefbaar Alphen Gelderland that brings together village life, education and business, and we’re excited to see how the colony will grow and mature over time. Our hives in France, Spain, the U.K., Italy, Germany and Switzerland are also flourishing and we plan to sponsor many more hives in the future.