The Hive Effect
Many Minds.One Hive. Every Cell Connected
A non‑profit community and environmental project reconnecting people with nature — and with each other.
Encourage Wildlife
Your Efforts Rewarded
There are so many tiny little ways in which you can help to encourage wildlife in the community.
They're all so amazing that you may have to ask yourself, "why haven't I, or why haven't we done this already"?
Your small actions combined, create Our large movement.
INSECT HOTELS
Giving bees, beetles and brilliant bugs a home is a great way of giving nature a helping hand. Simply bundle a pile of old sticks, bamboo, canes, pinecones, or even leaves together and leave them in a quiet corner, on the floor or even on the wall.
PLANT PLANTS
There are so many plants available nowadays that there isn't a scenario where we can't grow one, and we should really plant a few more. Outdoors, indoors, on the patio, on the driveway, on the porch or even on the balcony.
Sit and watch as your new friends arrive to visit your new plantation!
BIRD FEEDERS
An often overlooked and simple solution to helping the environment. As with plants, the bird feeder can be installed virtually anywhere and they come in many forms and designs.
The thing that they all have in common is that they attract nature, of the feathered variety, and they are so pretty to watch and listen to.
HEDGEHOG HIGHWAYS
Not just for hedgehogs!
Our gardens nowadays are bordered with fences and gravel boards and this has had huge consequences to the wildlife in our areas as the cannot move from place to place as they normally would, and in most cases, need.
A simple small hole in the fence at ground level or even a small hole that passes underneath the fence itself will be just as good.
Rebuild Ecosystems
Without this there is no us!
Ancient life
When designing this section it was imperative that the information provided was precise and accurate.
Therefore we have provided direct links to the individuals, elders, and communities that continue to inspire us here at The Hive Effect.
Take a look at what we're all doing and see how we aim to rebuild the ground up!
At The Hive Effect we already have a long-standing admiration for Paul Stamets, an author and advocate of medicinal fungi.
His experiences and his knowledge have truly opened the doors to the world to gain a better understanding of the unknown and misunderstood world of funga.
He is the person that started our journey to understanding this world, which is so vast that we simply had to let you find out for yourself.
FUNGA -
It’s a whole new world out there!
MYCELLIUM
MORE INFORMATION AND LINKS COMING SOON
It will blow your mind
MORE INFORMATION AND LINKS COMING SOON.
Learn - Unlearn - Relearn
Protect Education
Evolutionary Education
The elders and the wise teach the youngsters and the inquisitive.
It is how civilisations have got this far. It is how nature evolved so intricately.
At The Hive Effect we are reinstating this ancient tradition that society seems to have lost somewhat.
Let's get old school cool.
Tomorrow, yesterday will have already known your intentions.
The Hive Mind
Education has the power to modify society and it can stand as a proper solution to solving different sorts of complex problems that exist in a society, and therefore education plays a vital role in protecting and conserving the environment. Studying bees adds significantly to the wider education of pupils. For example:
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Bees are pollinators vital to our food chain. One third of the food we eat would not be available but for bees.
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Bees, like other insects, are part of a food chain.
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The social life of the honeybee colony provides a controversial start to thinking about the structure of societies.
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The harvest from honeybees of honey, pollen, wax and propolis has nutritional, craft, manufacturing, and medical applications, many of which we still do not fully understand to this day.
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Pollination by bees is important for genetic sustainability. Genes that have evolved in other animals are important to our future too.
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In the UK about 70 crops are dependent on, or benefit from, visits from bees. In addition, bees pollinate the flowers of many plants which become part of feed for farm animals.
Building a Knowledgeable Society
Environmental education teaches individuals and communities about the environment and its related problems, raises awareness of the solutions to the environmental problems, and motivates the people to solve the issues and take proper actions to save their environment from future potential issues.
Education plays a massive role in building up a society that is knowledgeable towards the environment and skilled towards tackling and resolving its associated problems.
Promoting Environmental Awareness
When it comes to environmental protection, education provides better awareness of a variety of environmental issues that take place day by day to everyone in society than anything else.
Everyone can understand and become aware of the various environmental issues if they get a proper education on it. Education provides knowledge on how natural environment functions, and how human beings can deal with behaviour and ecosystems for sustainability.
Promoting a Holistic Approach
Education on saving the environment or environmental protection programs promotes a holistic, lead-by-example approach among people. It allows people to make create, maintain, and protect sustainable and fair use resources that are devoid of damaging the environment.
Environmental education strategies include training individuals to prosper in a sustainable society and help people to establish a strong bond with nature and this also promotes an ecologically sustainable future.
Investment and Reward
Making a real investment in environmental education is very important since we live in an era where more and more people are disconnected from nature and unaware of critical environmental issues.
Environmental education leads people to be future conservation leaders and encourages them to take serious and effective action towards critical environmental issues of the day.
Great Misconceptions.
It is surprising to find that children are not only scared of bees but genuinely frightened, even terrified, yet this is mainly due to the great misconception that the bee will sting them for no reason other than to harm them.
This default is totally wrong, and if we (society) are to make any difference at all then we should start by educating our children correctly and factually from an early age.
Just like a stagnant pond, a stagnant educational climate doesn’t produce anything worthwhile.
“Attitudes to bees must change and a new generation needs to be educated about the value of bees and the threats to their existence”.
Applying Environmental Education
Environmental education covers a vast spectrum of subjects and topics. Bees have been educating and inspiring mankind for centuries and will continue to do so long into the future. Here is a small list of ways in which bees have influenced the way in which our education has been implemented and how our bees can improve the ways in which we are educated.
Music to your ears.
A great example of how music can reflect real life and can be used as a stimulus for pupils, can be found in Rimsky Korsakov’s - The Flight of the Bumblebee.
Literacy
Bees can be a great stimulus for creative writing, poetry and songs. Researching, writing, presenting and debating issues related to bees, their roles and our attitude to bees and other creatures is also essential.
Mathematics
The honeycomb. The beehive structure is a brilliant starting point for investigation into regular and irregular shapes and tessellation. Students can also explore facts and figures in distance, speed, weight, and volume.
Science
Examining the ecosystem, food chains, pollination, and human effects on the environment with an aim to underpin our understanding of the structure of insects.
Aristotle 384 BC 322 BC -
“Concerning the generation of animals akin to them, as hornets and wasps, the facts in all cases are similar to a certain extent, but are devoid of the extraordinary features which characterize bees; this we should expect, for they have nothing divine about them as the bees have”
Geography
Investigating the significance of bees to other cultures and religions, past and present, and consideration into the moral and social significance of losing bees. Investigation into the ways in which bee products are used around the world.
Design and Technology
Hive structures, the construction of insect homes and making bee products provide useful experiences in developing ideas, using tools, and exploring the properties of different materials.
Art and Design
From ancient times to modern marketing, bees and honeycomb motifs have inspired imaginative designs such as printing patterns, elaborate murals, and textile work across the globe.
Schools
Classrooms in the real world
Some students prefer the classroom and academic study, whilst others prefer the shortest classroom time possible and a more hands on approach. It’s the way we are built and it’s the way The Hive Effect is built. The introduction of bees in local communities will allow for a fact-based education to take place from an early stage, where children can understand that bees are not hostile creatures, but are in fact very social, intelligent creatures that play a major role in our complete existence.
Honeybees represent a highly organized society, with various bees having very specific roles during their lifetime: e.g., nurses, guards, grocers, housekeepers, construction workers, royal attendants, undertakers, foragers, etc. This real-life education is provided partly via the apiaries and natural hives at The Hive Effect, where everyone is invited to participate. Take a look and see what we’re doing in your community and don’t forget, that if you like anything that we do, a nod or a thumbs up would be very greatly appreciated!
Colleges
There's a buzz about environmental sciences
Colleges can benefit from being able to study real, live, working beehives. Students can conduct task such as surveillance experiments along with data collection and analysis to further understand these magnificent creatures, their vital roles within the ecosystems surrounding them and their effectiveness upon the wider environment.
Indeed the honeybee colony, believed to be the most widely studied creature after man, and instinctively able to organise itself into a super-efficient society, is perhaps, more than any other creature, held up as setting an example humans may be wise to follow.
Universities and Academia
Ensuring that All Voices are Heard
Universities and academic groups would be able to study and gather data on a large scale. Environmental sciences could take a new leap into such things as medical science.
Scientists have marvelled at the angular perfection of honeycomb for centuries, but none have been able to clearly describe how it forms. Engineers in the UK and China have taken a leap forward by showing that the cells actually start off as circles, moulded by the shape of the bees’ body, and then flow into a hexagonal pattern seconds later. – These findings are reported the Journal of the Royal Society Interface (July 2016)
An example of what modern ideas and technologies have enabled us to understand about the bee can be seen on the video – ‘the dance of the bees’.
The effects of radio, WiFi and other frequencies are new sciences and could be further studied by students and academics alike.
The Youngsters & The Elders
The energetic and inquisitive, and the patient and knowledgeable.
How wouldn’t this work?
The youngsters of today (I sound old already), have very little chance for involvement when it comes to nature and the great outdoors, yet these little saplings are raised and educated to be aware and conscious of the decisions that they make regarding it.
The elders of our communities can be isolated and cut-off from the world around them, with no purpose, no interaction or communication and we wonder why mental health is out of control.
Yet these elders are the knowledgeable and wiser mother trees, whos’ purpose is to ensure that the information that they have processed in their lifetime is passed on to their saplings.
Generations with purpose, meaningfulness, and understanding thrive together and this genetic, connection, this matriarchal connection if you will, is becoming less every generation passing.
Re-establishing this broken link is required now more than ever, before we lose it, before we forget how to be parents or children ourselves for that matter.
- Graham Walker
A bee’s brain can halt the ageing process!
When older bees are tasked to do a job typically performed by younger bees, their brains not only stop aging, but also have a greater ability to learn new things by producing proteins only seen in the brains of younger bees. The human counterparts of these proteins have been shown to be protective against dementia and cellular stressors!
The Hive Effect will already be stimulating your brain, or it should be, because we haven’t even scratched the surface yet.