To celebrate World Bee Day, Bentley is pleased to announce the expansion of the Excellence Centre for Honey Production in Crewe, increasing the colony size of the famous ‘Bentley Bees’ from 600,000 to over 1 million through the installation of seven new bee hives.
As part of the company’s Beyond100 strategy, Bentley is focusing on making its historic Crewe campus even more environmentally friendly as the company aims towards becoming the leaders in sustainable luxury mobility. In a further move, Bentley is encouraging its colleagues to enhance local biodiversity by handing out wildflower seeds for them to plant in their communities.
Welcoming the new bees into the Bentley team, Andrew Robertson, Head of Site and Facilities Planning, comments:
“Our Bentley Bees have been at our site for almost five years, producing over 2,000 jars of honey for our extraordinary colleagues and customers. We hope that by installing seven new hives, in addition to ten hives already in place at our Excellence Centre for Honey Production, we can further enhance our positive impact on the local environment as part of a wider sustainability programme. This is to ensure Bentley remains a significant contributor to local biodiversity and adds to our ambition to be the leaders in sustainable luxury mobility.”
In partnership with ‘Buckley Bees’, Bentley installed a colony of 120,000 indigenous honey bees as part of British marque’s #GOTOZERO sustainable strategy. This year, the colony will now grow to over one million bees across 17 active bee hives at the company’s headquarters. The Crewe-based manufacturer, hopes that in 2023 Bentley can surpass last year’s record honey harvest, where the bees produced over 1,000 jars of honey whilst helping to pollinate the on-site flora and bring wider benefits to the surrounding Cheshire countryside.
The Excellence Centre for Honey Production is just one of many initiatives in place to improve site sustainability at the Crewe campus. Other activities include handmade bird and bat boxes dotted around the campus by Bentley colleagues, hedgehog highways, our expanding colleague allotments and much more. These initiatives help Bentley to support local wildlife and enhance natural beauty in local areas, whilst also boosting colleague mental wellness through the provision of sufficient green spaces.