The National Meadowland

bringing life back to our countryside
together

So let’s cut to the chase.

We need bees.

What do bees need?

Just like us bees need

A HOME

FOOD

NOT TO BE POISONED

Simple really.

BEES NEED

the national meadowland

So bees need somewhere safe to nest and a reliable source of food throughout their active period – February to October.

Bees need traditional species rich native wildflower meadows.

Simple really?

It should be. It could be.

A patchwork of wildflower meadows full of life. Full of bees. Full of butterflies, moths, insects and birds.

Teeming with vital creatures humming and fluttering and swooping and singing.

Native wildflowers mingling among gently swaying sun kissed grasses.

Can you imagine?

Can you picture it?

We can.

We call it…

the national meadowland

We need to help bees everywhere.

In our gardens, our public spaces, parks, forests, roadside verges.

Even our beaches.

But where we can and must have immediate honest effective action is on our agricultural land.

Loss of habitat due to intensive agriculture and pesticide use is having a massive negative impact on our native wild bees.

It’s time for our farming community to step up and be the heroes bees need right now.

We ask our farmers to come together and pledge to put at least 2% of their land back into organically managed traditional wildflower meadows.

That’s merely 1 in 50 acres – and less fertile land is ideal.

the national meadowland

We’re not asking for the land to become ‘unproductive’ but rather less intensively productive.

The meadows need to be left to the bees and other insects from March to September.

Then they can be cut for hay or grazed over the winter period where suitable.

No chemicals – fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides – or slurry should be applied to the land.

The National Meadowland when implemented should have a significant positive impact on wild bumblebee populations. According to research in the UK 2% of land growing flower rich habitats raises the survival rate of bumblebee queens and future generations by up to 4 times and should help reverse the declines we are currently observing.

We would hope that some of our farming community will be able to voluntarily come on board with this initiative but also realise that for many they will need to be compensated for their efforts.

Whilst it would be great for this initiative to be funded at a national or EU level we feel it is imperative in the first instance to forge ahead and will ask the business community to step in and help fund the first phase of this bee saving initiative.

to get involved in creating