Monmouth Bee Town

Our Patrons Bill Turnbull and Monty Don celebrate the announcement

We are pleased and proud to announce that our home town of Monmouth, South Wales is officially now The “Bee Town”.

How did this come to bee? It is not just that an international bee charity is based here, although that helps! The move to give the town its new status was begun by several groups and uniquely knowledgeable individuals living in the area who have helped Monmouth become one of the most proactive bee-friendly places anywhere. In addition to Bees for Development, these is also Bee Friendly Monmouthshire and the Monmouthshire Meadows Group.

The town of Monmouth is home to an annual and increasingly popular Bee Festival (unfortunately not held in 2020), a series of Bee Talks and film-showings, many community bee friendly areas, and bee friendly planting schemes around the town. Many of the world’s foremost bee experts have visited us at Bees for Development.

Bees for Development has worked with, and worked on, the County Council of Monmouthshire for some years, who now run a “Nature isn’t Neat” scheme and manages the area’s public spaces and roadside verges in a more wild-life-friendly way than a few years ago.

The next step was to take the idea to the Town Council to name Monmouth as a “Bee Town”. This was received with unanimous support in December 2019 and a small community grant was awarded to sign the town appropriately.

Work is still to be done as we see peoples’ engrained tendencies to clearing nature up with machines and chemicals in evidence around the town, but we hope our new status will help to make this become less and less routine.

There is no set of rules for gaining Bee Town status, and there are many wonderful initiatives around the globe, for example the Xerces Society’s Bee City Programme in the USA. We will make sure this has a long-lasting life here in Monmouth – our bees and other wildlife depend on it!

Visitors to Monmouth are welcomed with attractive and clear signage

Wild plants abound in May 2020