Milestone Infrastructure is delighted to share that it has saved three bee colonies while working on its A382 Jetty Marsh Link Road Project, on behalf of Devon County Council.
Our team has currently transported over 1,000 trees into the project’s nursery, as part of our biodiversity commitments to protect the environments in which we work.
While undertaking bat checks as part of the clearance preparation ahead of the translocation our team noticed a tree cavity full of sections of honeycomb.
Due to the time of year, our ecologists suspected the hive would be disused or old as the honeycomb was dark in colour, but engaging with local beekeepers, we were advised the bees may have been further down the trunk.
Once we knew the bees were inside, a rescue plan was initiated. The rescue for the bees took around four hours.
Sections of the honeycomb were taken out of the tree trunk piece by piece and cut into the size of a beehive frame. Elastic bands were used to secure it in place, and the frame was put into a temporary hive.
We are delighted that the bees have now been taken back to the local beekeepers’ property to be fed and kept warm during the remainder of winter, to ensure they survive.
We will continue to get reports on the progress of our Jetty Marsh bees, and hopefully, when the time is right, we can relocate the bees to our nursery.
Alice Searle, Senior Environmental Advisor for Milestone’s South West Projects, said: “With pollinators in decline in the UK, it felt incredibly important to support the rescue. We look forward to hopefully having the bees pollinating our plants across the A382 in the future.”
We are committed to protecting the environment and finding ways to make our operations more sustainable to ensure a future of safer, greener highways.
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