A helping home for bees

As first sight the Beehaus looks more like a giant cool box on legs than anything you might associate with nature. And despite the fact that it comes in a variety of garish colours this is definitely the new black when in comes to contemporary beekeeping.

Designed by Omlet - the company that brought us the "eglu" chicken house - this is beekeeping in its most minimalist, functional form. As the brochure boasts, "making honey with a Beehaus is as simple as 1,2,3".

If that all sounds a little...architectural, it's meant to: the emphasis here is very much on design - even the name, Beehaus, pays tribute to the modernist 20th century Bauhaus movement.

The idea is to encourage a new generation of young, eco-conscious, urban apiarists. The kind of people who already spend a lot of green pounds, probably on organic honey, but who view beekeeping as something rather quaint and old-fashioned. The sort of thing that elderly - and a little eccentric - relatives might get up to at the bottom of country cottage gardens.

But the plight of Britain's bees is now so serious that the Beehaus has won the endorsement of the Government's conservation watchdog, Natural England.

The agency's chief scientist, Tom Tew, wants to raise an army of hobby beekeepers and to encourage gardeners to grow the kind of plants and flowers that will sustain wild bee populations.

"It's a fantastic way of getting people engaged, and getting them closer to nature. It helps them understand the wonder and beauty of nature, but it also helps them understand the huge value that species like the honeybee bring to humans."

But the idea of hundreds of novice beekeepers suddenly starting up their own colonies has raised concerns amongst more experienced apiarists. Although they're keen to see more people get involved the British Beekeepers Association is warning that bees, rather like puppies, are not just for Christmas.

If you want to keep bees, the BBKA's Dr Ivor Davis says, get in contact with a local club or association and find out more about it before taking the plunge.