About the company

Heron Bros is an award-winning construction and property development company that operates throughout the UK, Ireland, and Europe. It works with public, private, and third-sector clients delivering education, leisure, and stadia, as well as commercial retail and office space, , health pharmaceutical, community and regeneration projects.

The issue

Globally, pollinators (such as bees, butterflies, moths, and other insects) are in decline due to human activities. Our land management practices, including the use of pesticides and removal of key habitat, are having harmful effects on pollinator population numbers and distributions. Pollinators support plant biodiversity and are essential for the production of around two thirds of our crops. Therefore, we need to take action to halt and reverse their decline.

What the company did

Heron Bros has taken action on this important issue by incorporating bee bricks within the construction of the new buildings at Ballycastle Shared Campus. Bee bricks, as shown above, provide essential nesting sites for solitary bees, which may have otherwise been removed through human disturbance of bare soils, dead trees, and plant stems.  Together with the planting of suitable flowering species on the Ballycastle SEC site, Heron Bros is providing nesting and foraging sites for wild pollinators.

School education programme

Whilst this will directly help the local bees, Heron Bros is widening the impact by holding educational workshops for Ballycastle Shared Campus, inspiring them to take action in their own lives, now and into the future.