The Northern Roots Beekeeping Centre of Excellence

Northern Roots is a project to create the UK’s largest urban farm and eco-park on 160-acres of under-used green space in the heart of Oldham, Greater Manchester. Developed for and with local communities, the vision for Northern Roots is to create sustainable economic, social and environmental benefits for those communities. In 2020 Northern Roots initiated a range of pilot projects to create opportunities for local communities to get involved. These have included an Environmental Team volunteering programme, a Community Food Growing volunteering project, the Northern Roots Creative Writing Competition, Walk Leader Training and the Northern Roots Trainee Beekeeping Programme.  Our Beekeeping Project was particularly successful and we would now like to develop this further.

We established the Northern Roots apiary in 2020, training 20 members of the community in the craft of Beekeeping through a 12-month course.  A quarter of trainees now own hives and are producing their own honey.  We have launched a range of honey and wax products and are running paid beekeeping workshops.  Our courses are consistently oversubscribed with people travelling for over three hours to attend. We are the only local apiary that offers courses, and the nearest training centre is over 40 miles away.  We are therefore keen to expand our apiary and establish a Beekeeping Training Centre of Excellence with facilities for accredited training courses and honey and wax extraction and production. 

Development of a Beekeeping Training Centre of Excellence at Northern Roots.  This will include a facility for qualified beekeepers and trainers to hire that is equipped to run workshops and courses, and be used as a professional assessment centre for British Beekeepers Association qualifications.  It will also include a kitchen fitted out with specific honey extraction equipment that is compliant with food hygiene standards.  We will supplement in situ courses with outreach events using a mobile observation hive to enable schools and communities to learn about bees’ importance as pollinators and for biodiversity.  The project would develop skills and employment opportunities, support local beekeeping businesses, offer environmental education, and enhance the biodiversity and productivity of the Northern Roots site.  Creation of the centre would assist the financial sustainability of Northern Roots, through facility hire, extended opportunities for training and workshop delivery and increased production. 

Our project will cost approximately £35,000 to fund the development costs for year one, including beekeeper salary, hives, bees, extraction equipment and a mobile observation hive for schools and community outreach work and deliver the following outcomes: 

• Up to 100 people take part in bee keeping training courses 

• Up to 10 go on to achieve BBKA qualifications 

• Up to 15 school and community groups, totally 500 individuals, learn about bees, pollination and biodiversity 

• 5 new beekeeping businesses set up at Northern Roots and across Oldham 

Corporate Sponsorship of individual Hives is also available starting at £500. 

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