Saving the small things that run the planetOur North Cornwall B-Lines project is working with local landowners and communities to help threatened bee species by creating or enhancing 20 hectares of flower-rich habitat along the North Cornwall coast.
We are creating and restoring areas of flower-rich habitat, which will form stepping-stones for wildlife, enabling pollinating insects to colonise new areas and help to ensure the future of several threatened bee species. Habitat work will be targeted to help species such as the Large Scabious Mining Bee (Andrena hattorfiana), the Brown-banded Carder Bee (Bombus humilis) and the Buff-banded Mining Bee (Andrena simillima).
Update December 2022: We are thrilled to announce that new populations of the rare bees (including Large Scabious Mining Bee (Andrena hattorfiana) & Red Bartsia Bee (Melitta tricincta) have been found in Cornwall as a part of the North Cornwall B-Lines project Find out more
The project’s work focusses in three keys areas of the North Cornwall B-Line, including around Hayle and The Towans, Perranporth and Cubert, and Trevose and Polzeath. Along the wider North Cornwall B-Line we will also run workshops and one-to-one site visits to help people enhance their farms, gardens or businesses to create more places for pollinators.
If you live in one of our key areas and would like to support our project and create a wildflower area in your garden, please meet us at one of our events and collect a mini meadow kit to sow at home. More information about how to create your mini meadow can be found under Downloads on the top right hand side of this webpage. Please make sure you share your wonderful work with us and add your wildflower area to our B-Lines map.
If you’d like to get involved in the project there will be opportunities at our talks, workshops, and survey days. We are also working with schools and local communities to introduce them to the threatened bee species they share their local area with, and encourage people to take action to aid nature’s recovery.
We’ve created an education pack for primary schools which can be found under Downloads on the top right of this page. It contains resources and activities for both key stage one and key stage two to teach pupils more about Cornwall’s beautiful bees and why and how they can help look after them. The pack is designed to be self-led so can be used by any school, anywhere. Please do share this with any teachers in Cornwall and together we can make a real difference and ensure that these bee populations survive into the future!
Please join our Cornwall mailing list to be kept up to date with events and activities.
To celebrate the success of the North Cornwall B-Lines project so far, we have created a short film with local video production company Here Now Films. This film showcases some of the work undertaken through the project. The film can be viewed below.
Did you miss our Introduction to Cornwall’s Rare and Threatened Bees online event?
Catch up here, joining Buglife’s Laura Larkin and Cornish entomologist Paddy Saunders, to learn more about the fascinating bees that inhabit Cornwall, the work Buglife are doing to conserve them and how you can get involved?
Would you like to learn how to identify more wonderful wildflowers?
Let Fern Carroll-Smith from the Eden Project’s National Wildflower Centre take you through the basics of botanical ID.
North Cornwall B-Lines is funded by the Government’s Green Recovery Challenge Fund and Milkywire. The fund is being delivered by The National Lottery Heritage Fund in partnership with Natural England and the Environment Agency.
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