As part of IVC Evidensia’s Clinical Board core initiative to prioritise the welfare of all animals, IVC Evidensia and The British Bee Veterinary Association (BBVA) have announced a collaborative partnership to enable UK practices to become more bee friendly.
IVC Evidensia have agreed to centrally fund the first 25 percent of their practices who register as bee friendly practices.
Registering as a bee friendly practice helps practices to highlight their support of the more than 270 species of bees in the UK that are in need of our help. Practices can show their support via window stickers, posters for reception areas, lapel badges, wildflower seeds, and colouring sheets featuring bee friendly plants and ways that we can help the ecology of our neighbourhoods. Support also includes a regular monthly newsletter to highlight what practices can do to support all pollinators (honeybees, bumble bees, hoverflies, etc) at the practice and via their clients to spread the message into the community.
In addition, practices will be able to obtain bee friendly hotels as well as BBVA and IVC Evidensia wildflower seeds for clients to sow in the locality.
Clients are increasingly interested in the environmental credentials of practices and look to practices to find out what they can do to help. The BBVA’s members are vets and veterinary nurses who are bee keepers and will be providing their advice on all aspects of supporting wild bees and encouraging practices to consider starting to have onsite bee friendly, or even to keep bees themselves.
There will be a number of initiatives throughout the year including colouring competitions to help involve children and providing supporting information for practices to involve their local schools.
The bee friendly packs will be distributed as part of the regular provision of supplies to practices so that the environmental impact of the distribution of the packs will be minimised.
As part of IVC Evidensia’s vision of building the world’s best veterinary group, they are committed to building a more strategic approach to sustainability for the group thereby, making a more positive impact on the world, better meeting the expectations of their teams and clients and ultimately becoming the market leader for sustainability in the sector globally.
At IVC Evidensia, sustainability is a key part of its strategy, with a sustainable approach to how the group operates.
BBVA President, John Hill said: “The British Bee Veterinary Association is delighted to have the opportunity to work with IVC Evidensia to promote [the welfare of] bees and other pollinators. The veterinary practice premises is an ideal place to educate the practice team and clients on how to have an enhanced greener environment to help our busy pollinating friends.”
Edward Davies, chair of the IVC Evidensia small animal clinical board and clinical director at CheshirePet, part of the IVC Evidensia Group, commented: “It is great that IVC Evidensia is sponsoring 100 practices in the UK to become members of the British Bee Veterinary Association for the next year.
“We are one of the sites at CheshirePet in Holmes Chapel and we aim to ensure we have an area dedicated to bees all year round over the next year, planting seeds and flowers that are appropriate to the time of year to attract bees – under the guidance of the monthly newsletters we will receive from the British Bee Veterinary Association.
“We have recently had some late season flowers come out at the practice and even during these colder months we are seeing bees actively feeding off them. We all know how important pollinators are to our environment and supporting them like this is great for our clients and staff. We also intend to get some bee hotels to mount on the practice to encourage solitary bees to come there too.”
Richard Artinstall, clinical director at Vale Referrals, discovered beekeeping during lockdown. He said: “The IVC Evidensia Bee Friendly Collaboration is a fantastic initiative. Not only is it something that can improve the biodiversity around our practices but it can have a wider impact on supporting bee populations across the UK.”
He went on to say: “As a family we inherited a beehive as a ‘lockdown hobby’ and now this has morphed into six beehives which create lots of fun, learning and honey!
“As a species [bees] are diverse and fascinating. They have amazing population dynamics and seeing them up close makes you realise how fragile their populations are and how important they are to our environmental future and also our well-being. I would fully recommend this initiative!”
