Case Studies

For 10 years we worked with Chicken Restaurant chain Nando's to help them make their business more bee friendly.

Realising that almost all of their produce is reliant on insect pollination we worked with Nando's to identify how they could make their supply chain more bee friendly by encouraging their suppliers to farm in a more bee friendly fashion. This included asking them to minimise pesticide usage and include flower stripes and wild bee nesting habitats on their farms.

Nando's also worked with us and London Beekeeping Association to fund and create a pollinator paradise at a community garden in Clapham.

For a number of years we kept 2 colonies of bees on their UK headquarters and the honey produced was gifted to staff as a sweet reward, used to make chilli infused honey and honey beer - brewed locally by Hiver Beers in Bermondsey. These were the chains first ever hyper local products and they went on to secure multiple awards.

Between 2016 and 2020 we worked with this social housing provider to design and deliver biodiversity enhancements at a number of their housing estates in London Borough of Ealing.

We delivered consultations with residents to find out what their thoughts were on rewilding amenity areas of the estates and then made informed designs for new habitats which included orchards, native hedges, new pollinator friendly gardens and urban wild flower meadows like the one pictured above.

We did all of this whilst working with residents engaging them in planting activities and developing their own green skills enabling them to take on stewardship of the green spaces.

We've worked with Japanese bank Nomura since 2016 managing their 2 colonies of Honey Bees and their 2500m2 green roof.

Their green roof was installed in 2011 as a simplistic sedum carpet but had been colonised by a wide variety of plants and animals, amassing a considerable amount of biodiversity.

Since 2019 we've delivered comprehensive and thorough biological monitoring of their roof including monthly botany surveys, Flower visiting insect surveys, pan trapping, pit fall trapping, malaise trapping, moth trapping and vacuum sampling.  

We've  delivered habitat enhancements pimping this roof out for maximum benefit to pollinators and implementing a dynamic and responsive management plan.

We've added additional beneficial plant species, Hoverfly breeding ponds, Bee nesting mounds, Bee hotels, Dead wood habitats and rubble piles for invertebrates.

All of this has lead to over 230 plants species now thriving on the roof and over 200 animal species including Rare Black Redstarts, Adonis Ladybird, Toadflax Brocade Moth and a rare Orchid which grows no-where else in the  UK and 32 species of Bee.

The roof is now considered an example of best practice green roof management for biodiversity.

Every Friday May to October we host nature positive green roof tours with staff and tenants from the building.

Our work With Nomura helps them comply with strategies such as Task Force for Nature Related Financial Disclosure, ISO14001 and City of London Climate Change adaptation policies.

We've worked with a number of schools over the years to deliver bee education sessions to pupils ranging from reception class to post 16.

These might be a single session to the whole school as part of a special assembly or may be a series of sessions delivered to individual classrooms. They can be in or outdoors based but all are highly engaging and interactive.

We bring along beekeepers tools, props, bee suits, examples of honey, wax, propolis and other hive products as well as added value items made from these materials like soaps, hand creams and polish.

We teach students about what makes bees different from other insects, look at the other types of pollinating insects and how combined they all contribute to helping produce 1/3 of the food we eat.

We discuss threats to pollinators and how we can all take action to help them.

We help many of the schools design and build a pollinator station in their schools grounds planted with highly attractive flowers.

Some of our schools sessions are delivered in partnership and funded by School Food Matters.

Since 2015 we've been recording bees and surveying pollinators in Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park, delivering guided bee walks, bee identification training sessions and providing advice on habitat management for some of the rare pollinators which inhabit the site.

This is probably the most biodiverse site in central London, the countries most urban woodland and probably the best site in central London for pollinators. At least 76 species of bee have been recorded here and these include a number of rare and threatened species like Bombus humilis, Andrena hattorfiana, Hoplitis adunca and nationally scarce Andrena labiata.

Under particular threat at this site is Greater London's largest known breeding population of Andrena hattorfiana the Large Scabious Mining Bee. This very fussy bee is threatened with local extinction due to encroaching development around the site and Apicultural have been working with local schools to grow scabious plants which the bees rely on to feed their offspring and plant them out in the park to increase the habitat for them. in 2025 only 13 individuals were seen so this species is in a precarious position in Greater London but with our help we hope to build upon their numbers and safeguard them from local extinction.

We've been working with social housing provider Poplar HARCA on their 'Great Green Estate' project mapping biodiversity on their housing land and identifying ways of making net gains for biodiversity and biodiversity uplift through habitat enhancements.

Regular biological monitoring visits have been made to record and monitor which species are using the sites and we have been collaborating with landscape architects to design and install habitat enhancements to boost biodiversity.

Through ongoing biological monitoring we are able to demonstrate how the interventions have boosted the numbers of species and individual organisms across the estate.

Poplar HARCA are one of the biggest landowners in Tower Hamlets borough owning around 30% of the land area and their great green estates program as it rolls out over more sites has the potential to significantly improve nature recovery in the borough.

We've been working with the Fulham Palace rust for over a decade assisting them with their beekeeping project.

In 2001 our senior consultant Mark was called to a swarm in the palace grounds which had came from a long standing feral colony residing inside their large Cedar tree.

The palace had a long history of beekeeping prior to the 20th century and had recently discovered and restored a series of bee bowles in the walls of the walled garden. The swarm generated interest in keeping hives of Honey Bees at the the site again to continue a historical tradition at the site.

2 hives of locally sourced Honey Bees were introduced and 4 volunteers and the assistant gardener trained in their care over the course of 2 years.

The bees produced a delicious honey in their first year which won best urban honey at the National Honey Show and was used by Michelin star chef Phil Howard at his Square restaurant in St James.

The bees are currently cared for by 3 volunteers but we occasionally revest to  advise on colony health and wellbeing, and to review sustainable beekeeping practices.

Living alongside the sustainably managed Honey Bee hives at Fulham palace are are diverse range of wild pollinators. 

These include rare solitary wasps, Orchard Mason Bees, Exotic Mexican grass carrying wasps, Bellflower specialist bees and a large number of Andrena Mining Bees. There are also dozens of species of Hoverfly recorded at this site.

The gardens have a high degree of successional flowering which provide food for pollinators virtually 12 months of the year.

Alongside Dr Tony Madgwick we conduct monthly pollinator surveys at this site and have been training palace staff and volunteers in pollinator identification and how to monitor and record.

We are building up a picture of which plants are most attractive and most beneficial to different pollinator species throughout the year to enable the gardening team to make informed decisions on how to manage the garden for nature.

This work is part of their palaces movement to become more biodiverse, caring for the sites natural heritage as well as its cultural heritage.

Over the years we've worked with a number of private landlords and home owners to design and install pollinator friendly planting on residential properties.

The majority of these have been typival ground level based gardens, but we have also delivered a small residential green roof and delivered a number of high rise balcony and terrace gardening projects.

Pictured above is an example of a colourful bee friendly container on an 8th floor balcony overlooking Canary Wharf.

Despite the height and exposure this balcony garden regularly attracted Bumblebees and Honey Bees to the plantings.

We designed this planting to be wind tolerant, require minimal watering and be low maintenance. The planters can be deadheaded to prolong the flowering period but only really required an annual cut back in autumn.

In 2023 we were commissioned By London Borough of Tower Hamlets to deliver an extensive pollinator monitoring project in Victoria Park.

The 78 hectare park is one of the largest parks in inner London and attracts around 12 million visitors annually.

We conducted monthly timed flower visiting insect surveys at 6 locations around the park March to September, A twice a year full site survey and a breeding bees survey in spring. We also put out pan traps and deployed a malaise trap to sample flying insects in a area of rank meadow.

over 131 pollinator species were recorded including 57 species of bee.

The most attractive plant grown in the flowers displays was Scabiosa ochraleuca - which was particularly good at attracting rare Brown Banded Bumblebees. 

Around 15-20,000 ground nesting Andrena Bees breed in the park and we were able to identify important nesting areas and nest habitat features so that they can be preserved by the parks staff.

This work was funded by an environmental levy fund raised by events organisers which use the park to host a summer music festival.

Over the years we've worked with a number of schools and youth charities to deliver environmentally themed youth enterprise projects.

These include work with the St Pauls Way Trust school in Tower Hamlets, the East London Independent School in Newham,  Hackney Based Golden Company and St Marys Garden 'Golden Futures' group.

We have worked with Young people to design an enterprise project sourcing local honey from small scale sustainable urban beekeepers, jar and label the product for sale. Students have learnt about food labelling requirements, food hygiene and marketing using digital media.

Students have also learnt about production costs, profit margins and how to appropriately price their products.

We have also delivered garden enterprise projects where pupils have grown fruit and vegetable and flowering plants from seed, cuttings or bought in module plants and grown them on for sale producing professional horticultural standard plants.

The enterprise projects culminate in students manning a sales stall at a local market or pop up shop in a corporate office where they gain experience of customer engagement, handling payments (including cashless payments using a card reader), operating a till and perfecting their customer service skills.

We've worked with London Borough of Tower Hamlets on a number of projects over the years delivering bee habitat creation workshops with resident groups, providing advice to their arms length social housing management company and  conducted detailed pollinator surveys in the boroughs parks and green spaces.

The culmination of this work has been working with the council on producing a Biodiversity Action Plan for bees.

The action plan highlights the rare and threatened bees found in the borough and the measures being taken to conserve them.

We also identified a flagship bee species for each habitat type. These include species for open mosaic habitats, meadows, woodland, parkland and species that are associated with standing deadwood habitats.

read the bees action plan here: 

In 2018 we began working with City of London Corporation to return Honey Bees to the Mansion House - home of the City Lord Mayor.

After decades of having Honey Bees on the Mansion House roof there had been a gap of a few years after the colonies had died and the incoming Mayor and Mayoress who are keen beekeepers wanted them to return.

We worked with a master craftsman to design and build bespoke hives to house 2 new bee colonies. These hives are modelled on an oversized WBC style hive and made from space age high pressure composite wood, sport a replica portico, lanterns and have a patinated copper roof. They also have a ubique skirt design which allows for air circulation but prevents strong drafts coming in through the open mesh floor. The base has adjustable feet to ensure the unit stands level on any surface. The inner body comprises of Recycled Polymer hives. These are 76% more thermally efficient than traditional thin walled wooden hives and offer the bees increased comfort and require the bees to spend less energy maintaining their preferred temperature and humidity. The bees energy savings allows them to focus on staying healthy and maximising their honey crop. They survive winter better and consume substantially fewer resources to meet their needs and have produced a surprisingly generous crop every summer since their installation.

The honey is jarred and gifted to visiting dignitaries to the Mansion House, Gifted to the Mayoress's aids and volunteers and auctioned for charity raising up to £1000 per jar for good causes.

The chefs at the Mansion House kitchens have also used the honey in dishes served at banquets and fund raising events held at the House.  

Pollen from the Hives is analysed for plant DNA and screened for pollutants to contribute to environmental monitoring.

Alongside our beekeeping project at Mansion House we have also installed pollinator friendly planting to replace the plastic box hedge in the porticos window boxes.

A selection of plants were chosen based on research findings by Rosybee nurseries, The Laboratory for apiculture and Social Insects at Sussex University and our own plants trials.

Geranium Rozanne, Stachys, Everlasting Wallflower Bowles Mauve, Spring bulbs, Heuchera, Hellebores and Lavender were added to provide forage for insects over a long season. Trailing Ivy provides cover for other invertebrates.

On the buildings 5th floor roof terrace we've installed large planters filled with wild flowers and solitary bee nesting boxes to provide habitat for native pollinators.

The planting has attracted Bumblebees, Anthophora bees, Megachile Bees, Osmia bees, a range of butterflies and solitary potter wasps.

All our plants were supplied by peat free and pesticide free growers and are planted in organic compost.

For a decade now we have been working weekly during term time with TCES schools helping them to transform their school grounds into healthy outdoor spaces.

We have worked with neurodiverse pupils to design their school garden and build it themselves creating a vibrant kitchen garden, wildlife area and a formal garden at the front of the schools reception area.

We run weekly gardening workshops teaching pupils a wide range of horticultural skills working towards RHS school gardening awards, AQA's in horticultural skills and Kew Gardens Environmental Youth Leadership Awards. They have also been awarded a bees needs award from DEFRA.

We are currently working with staff and pupils to implement a climate change resilience plan which is now required by Department for Education for all schools.

The school has made horticulture and integrated subject linking to all areas of the national curriculum.

The school has achieved an outstanding OFSTEAD inspection.

Things we teach:

• composting and nutrient cycles
• plant growth and development
• Plant propagation
• planting out and aftercare
• Tool use
• Tool maintenance
• garden furniture maintenance
• garden construction tasks
• flower arranging
• Festive wreath making
• Food growing
• Cooking with fresh produce
• Marketing garden produce for sale
• Cultural and historical aspects of horticulture
• Food plant origins
• wildlife gardening
• conserving pollinators
• building bee hotels and bird nest boxes

In 2024 we were commissioned by the University of Law to advise and design biodiversity improvements to their London campuses.

Recognising that acquiring hives of Honey Bees was not the way to help pollinators they listened to our advice and asked us to design a pollinator friendly garden for their Holborn campus.

The campus included a street level podia garden covering the roof of their basement level library. The podia included a large boring concrete raised bed filled with heavy clay soil and no drainage, on top of which were an assortment of containers with random plants. The garden is also surrounded on 4 sides by 4 storey buildings and receives little direct sunlight leaving the soil cool as well as wet. Challenging conditions for garden plants to grow.

We cleared the site of the pot plants covering the soil, removed a plastic weed membrane and dug over the area incorporating the well rotten bark mulch which had been decomposing on top of the plastic weed membrane. We dug in around half a tonne of sharp sand and a tonne of spent mushroom compost to improve the soil structure.

We added a Corten steel path edge and filled this with 10mm pea gravel to create a sustainable pathway for students and staff to explore the garden. Added shade tolerant plants like Mahonia, Sarcococca, Hardy Geraniums, Comfrey, Hellebores and Heuchera.

In areas receiving more sunlight we included Veronicas, Evening Primrose, Stachys, Foxgloves, Salvias, Teucrium and Campanula.

We also added a crap apple tree Hebe and Flowering Currant shrubs.

Lastly we installed a variety of solitary bee nesting habitats and Hoverfly breeding pond.

Raised beds were planted with edible herbs including Fennel, Anise hyssop, Mints and Chives.

The staff and students love their new garden and we are now working on a second roof garden project at their Moorgate Campus.

Since 2018 we've been working with the Bedford Estates in Holborn to care for their 2 hives of Honey Bees at Montague Street Gardens.

We've provided staff with beekeeper training and mentoring services, advised them on 'best practice urban beekeeping' and guidance on how to manage their estate for wild pollinators.

More recently we've helped them design a new wild flower meadow area and provided advice on bee friendly planting.

We've also conducted some pollinator monitoring shedding light on what species use the well planted gardens and built bee hotels to provide nesting habitat for wild bees. These have been well occupied by at least 10 different bee species as well as solitary wasps like Gasteruption jeculator and Isodonta mexicana.

In 2025 we participated in Open Garden squares where the normally private garden was opened up to the public. We held a pollinator information stall engaging visitors and sold bee friendly plants and local Honey.

In 2016 we worked with London Beekeepers Association to undertake a habitat improvement project at Mudchute Farm, Isle of Dogs.

The farm and surrounding parkland are one of the larger parks in Tower Hamlets borough and home to a teaching apiary which hosts learner beekeepers and visiting school groups.

Our Senior Consultant Mark was then the LBKA forage officer and Trustee and offered his professional skills to deliver this project for the charity.

We wrote a successful funding bid gaining £10,000 in funding from 'Tesco Bags of Help' scheme which gives grants generated by plastic carrier bag sales in its stores.

We secured additional funding from Neals Yard Remedies and Costain - a major Construction Company which was the main contractor building the nearby Queen Elizabeth Line.

The farm is home to several rare bees including Andrena pillipes and Bombus humilis. A selection of meadow wild flowers were sourced and planted as plugs and seed in several of the farms un-grazed fields to create new flowering habitat. A pollinator garden was also planted near the goats pens and Farm Café.

We then hired a master Scythes man to deliver a scything master class course training up volunteers in how to cut the meadow using traditional hand held Austrian Scythes.

We followed up the work with pollinator surveys to measure the success of the planting efforts.

Over 50 volunteers took part in this project which was entirely managed by Mark.

We also bought and supplied the LBKA with gardening tools purchased using the funds we raised.

Top complete the project we worked with Shelly's Signs to design interpretive signage which was installed on the site to educate visitors.