Brentford Football Club mascot, Buzz, was a special guest at Grey Court School, Ham, on Friday 18 June.

Working alongside BeesMax Ltd, and with Buzz in attendance, Grey Court School introduced a small hive of European honeybees to their grounds.

Beehives provide a range of exciting opportunities for learning outside of the classroom, including conservation, food security and use of technology to monitor the bees. Students from Grey Court‘s STEM Club (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) will have the chance to take part in fascinating science experiments using raw data collected from the hive. James Glanville, a student in year seven, said about the project: “I’m really excited to have bees at school and can’t wait to visit them with STEM club”.

Bees are our most important pollinator of food. A combination of pests, pesticides and habitat destruction has put the UK bee population in a challenging situation, and Grey Court School hopes to aid the conservation of this incredible species through education and practical experience.

Buzz’s visit to Grey Court School follows the Club’s work with Bees for Development, the global charity that makes life better with bees. Since 1993 Bees for Development has promoted sustainable beekeeping to combat poverty, help people to build resilient livelihoods and care for nature.

The Club was also proud to team up with WWF earlier this year to show our support for the #WorldWithoutNature campaign. To highlight the catastrophic decline of nature, WWF removed the panda from its logo for the first time in its 60-year history.

Jon Burr, Community Manager at Brentford FC, said: “Educational projects are so important in the protection of bees and we were so pleased that Buzz could help Grey Court School at the start of their beehive project. Over the next season the Club is looking to develop a number of local community projects to help support the local bee population, along with educating our supporters and staff on the importance of bees and how we impact them on a local level.”