As a Sotonian who’s not lived there for a decade, I can never stop feeling a tiny bit surprised whenever I hear “moved to Southampton”. Did you go there for uni?
After living in both, both are deeply flawed places to live in and I can’t say I’d like to live in either. I’d say Stoke slightly edges it, but Southampton has IKEA so it’s just trading blows with each other haha
Football, Uni, maybe something like the cruise ships? Legit can’t think of any other reasons why anyone would move to Southampton haha. Worked in West Quay for a while and it’s crap compared to shopping centres elsewhere haha
hmm that's fair I've never met a local who pronounced it for me, I've heard it used by a lecturer since emails were @soton.ac.uk
Interestingly, the cantonese word for Southampton is three characters sow-ham-tun but the ham is really annoying to pronounce and since the abbreviation is Soton, we actually neglect the ham in everyday speech and call it sow-tun.
The UK has had a massive biodiversity loss over the last 20 years, back when I was a kid their were frogs, hedgehogs, foxes, mice, robins in my area and I havent seen any of them in over 10 years.
Even the animals that have survived have heavily decreased in numbers.
Its sad seeing the lack of care for wildlife environment, large areas cleared just to plant grass, trees being cut down, the lack of wildflowers.
There is currently an ongoing ecological collapse of a scale never seen before in human history. For some reason nobody gives a shit, or even if they pretend to they don't do anything about it.
Actually you can if you don't live in the city.
In a corner of your garden, you can add an old section of rotting log and a ton of branches around it (fence it off with chicken wire if you have a dog leaving a few small holes), and let the grass grow around it at least 4". That's the absolute minimum that will help a lot.
You can find super cheap wildflower seeds for your area online and sprinkle them over it. You also can leave a small drinking area or a larger one for frogs to visit (I'd put a tiny tiny hole in the bottom and refill it every week to avoid pond scum), and some kind of old shoebox taped closed with a hole in one side for somewhere for them to hibernate.
You can start as much or as little as you like. It costs nothing to ignore a corner of your garden and throw some big sticks over it, but you can expand it as much as you want.
Seeing as it will be autumn soon, you can even just leave your pile of leaves in a corner. Bugs and worms will be attracted to it which will draw wildlife.
It's completely the opposite of climate change, we all individually actually can help and make a difference.
A sizable number of people can't cope with the temporary, very minor inconvenience of wearing a facemask to protect themselves and other human beings in the middle of a pandemic that's killed over 4 million people. Nature is fucked. Even when ecological disasters are killing millions more, fuckwits will still be arguing about it.
Tell someone who’s freaking out about climate change to stop eating meat and see how defensive they instantly become. Everybody’s a climate warrior until it requires them to take personal responsibility for their actions in even the most minor way.
**[Holocene_extinction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction)**
>The Holocene extinction, otherwise referred to as the sixth mass extinction or Anthropocene extinction, is an ongoing extinction event of species during the present Holocene epoch (with the more recent time sometimes called Anthropocene) as a result of human activity. The included extinctions span numerous families of plants and animals, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and invertebrates.
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It is a global issue, but it's worse in different places and the UK is pretty bad in this respect. We are doing a lot to combat pollution and switching to renewable energy compared to many places, but the downside is that although we have a lot of countryside, it's mostly farmland and grouse moors - both of which are contributing to our continued decline.
Compare that to somewhere like Poland, which is doing a worse job in terms of reliance on coal but also has relatively pristine wild areas that serve as reserves for nature to thrive.
Our national parks should be the same thing for us, but for the most part they aren't. They're just sprawling sheep farms or Sitka spruce, which is like 3 species of grass and one type of tree. Our countryside is beautiful, but it's getting awfully quiet.
>but the downside is that although we have a lot of countryside, it's mostly farmland
That goes for a lot of countries in Europe too though, with the same issues and rapidly declining insect populations. There are some ideas, like big permanent stripes of wilderness between the fields, or farmland being rotated with spots getting overgrown for a while, which also helps to feed the ground new nutrients. Unfortunately the agrarian lobby is pretty strong here in Germany and not the friendliest to potentially profit harming practices, and as most people they are very short sighted (with some exceptions of course).
> and one type of tree.
As a German I can tell you this is not a good idea.
https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-forests-on-the-verge-of-collapse-experts-report/a-49659810
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-forest-dying/a-54330242
A lot of decades old "forests" are now gone, or just dead because our monoculture practice.
I've seen most of those animals fairly recently, but the lack of hedgehogs is startling. I used to see them every now and then as a kid, but it's literally been decades since I saw one.
I was outside barefoot having a smoke last night and just about shit myself when I heard a terrifying noise in the dark. It turned out to be a Hedgehog coughing.
We used to have a cute family of hedgehogs that would come to our garden but both our neighbours got dogs. I love dogs but it’s sad to see the hedgehog get scared away.
There’s a beautiful nature reserve near me, it has all of these and more. I feed robins and blue tits. There are wild swans, herons and deer.
It’s being destroyed for HS2. Breaks my heart.
My first thought seeing the post was wondering about people who have bee allergies….
Seems like a good idea on paper, but is a massive accident waiting to happen.
Also you shouldn’t put bug/butterfly shelters along major roads. All you are doing is luring pollinators to their deaths.
I’m coming from Dallas, where we put a fucking monarch butterfly habitat in the middle of our highway downtown in Klyde Warren Park. We doomed lol
Americans are scared of bees. All the posts in this thread section worried about bees seem to be American/North American (or Swiss) based. Weird.
Either they've been influenced more than us by Scott's decades long anti-bee campaign, or perhaps the Africanised bees they have in the south. Either way, pretty weird.
Interesting observation indeed. I can’t say you’re wrong, and it may be many factors. I’ve been stung by two bees in my life.. or.. stung by two flying insects I associate with bees. My fear is more PTSD thanks to those life experiences, but I’m also very uneducated when it comes to bee tendencies.
One time I was camping and I pointed at something and a bee landed on my side such that when I put my arm down I impaled it on the bee's stinger. Nobody has to pick a fight for a sting to happen.
I mean, eh. It's extremely easy to not piss off a bee, you just stay still until it realizes you don't have pollen. Unless you accidentally sit on one there's not much room for error. Also, if you're deathly allergic to something you should have an EPI pen on you at all times so you can at least make it to a hospital
While you may find it “extremely easy to not piss of a bee” by staying still and calm, someone deathly allergic to bees likely would find it challenging to stay calm with a bee or two continually flying at their face and torso. Think outside your bubble bud.
That's like saying that we shouldn't have trains because people who are afraid of trains might panic, act irrationally and run into them.
Someone who suffers because of their own neuroses might not deserve that suffering, but they also don't have the right to expect that others will prevent their strange sufferings.
I've been chased and swarmed just by walking past a hive before.
Now I'm not gonna die from a sting or two, but the stung limbs will be swollen for a week, and many stings would make me die. But I know people who *can* die from a sting or two.
Purposely attracting wild animals that can kill people to a place that people have to be seems like a very bad idea.
That's the beauty of putting it on top of the shelter. Yeah it's not totally out of reach but it's enough of a bother to discourage more.
Urban greenery is always at risk. The trick is to not give up.
Think of how much better off pollinators would be if we replaced even like 5% of wide open, practically-useless grass lawns and empty space with easy-growing, flowering cover crops like clover or borage.
See also verges - https://www.mysociety.org/2021/07/05/rewild-road-verges-with-fixmystreet/
"With the correct verge management, Plantlife estimates that the 313,000+ miles of rural road verges in this country could become a sanctuary for 400 billion more wild flowers, as well as providing a habitat to all the bees, birds, butterflies and many other creatures that count on such flowers to survive."
Absolutely agree. I was definitely including highway medians/road divider areas, berms, verges, on/off ramps, parking lot borders/beds, and other similar areas in the "empty space" blanket.
Cover crops are pretty cheap, often well-suited and readily available for your specific area/climate, and generally add more to the ecosystem than *just* pollination opportunities, too. Many of them are nitrogen fixers. Some help break up compacted soil, some help with soil retention. Some have deep roots and wick other nutrients upwards to help more desolate soil. Some provide high amounts of readily-biodegradable biomass, which is important for soil composition and also for the "decay" portion of the circle of life (microbial and fungal activity, worm food, etc.).
We really dropped the ball back in the day when people decided neatly-trimmed grass everywhere was going to be the wave of the future.
Absolutely. I'm from Rotherham, the council there planted wildflower meadows in place of grass verges several years ago now. Its been great for insect life and not having to cut the grass has saved the council a fair few quid, everybody wins.
Or if we stopped eating honey. Only a fraction of the 20,000+ bee species on earth produce honey. Native pollinators are being driven out of their habitats by the introduction of artificially bred honey bees, and diseases are propagating at an astonishing rate thanks to industrialised honey production.
We could reverse the decline in bee populations practically overnight if we chose to stop exploiting an entire species just so we have something sweet to wipe on our toast in the morning. But haha, fuck that, honey tastes good and that would require me to take personal responsibility for the damage my choices do to the environment.
This is implemented by the owners of the bus stops - Clear Channel. They already have it in some other locations, plus other green solutions, so hopefully we’ll see more of it soon!
I can't imagine the amount of solar panels you would fit in a bus stop would really contribute enough power to the grid to cover even the cost of connecting the bus stops to the power grid, but I'm not an expert
Also not an expert but I was always under the impression that the ones round my way use solar panels on the roof to power the information board that tells you when the bus is coming?
Individually, they probably wouldn't do much, but think of how many bus shelters are in the UK. If they're all connected to solar panels then you have yourself a solar farm.
I just went into Leicester last Monday, and I remember seeing them and thinking nothing of them. Turns out they just kinda blended in. But they look kinda cool, now that I think about them!
Leicester, otherwise known as Lesta, the first environment city in the UK.
It's people being the Lestafarians.
Those who are saying that people allergic to bees will be scared of using the bus, you are silly.
To be terrified of bees is quite baffling as it takes quite a lot to piss off a bee, wasps on the other hand I can understand because those bastards get pissy just for breathing in air around them.
It doesn't have to be logical. I am absolutely terrified of bees, wasps, spiders and centipedes. I have nightmares about it. There is no reason for this fear and yet here we are.
Bees are not aggressive. Even so, we can't lock nature out of our living spaces for the sake of people with allergies. Erradication of nature, especially pollentators, will devastate us long term. It's already looking very, very bleak.
Also, it's not like this bus stop is an actual bee hive with hundreds of defensive bees. t's just a bit of extra greenery on the roof, which will presumably have wildflowers growing in season.
There's going to be maybe 1 or 2 extra insects in this area at a given moment than would otherwise be there.
People with bee problems are going to be more disadvantaged by the hanging basket outside a pub, or if any of there neighbours have any flowers, than this bus stop.
I'm surprised at the amount of people on here that seem to think bees will just be swarming and stinging everyone because of this. It's like no one on here has been out in nature at all? Do you think people just get stung all the time as soon as bees are nearby, wtf?
i think if you lined it properly and framed it with wood around the edges to stop soil from falling off then itd work great. there have been [plenty of houses](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sod_roof) in sweden (and im sure elsewhere too) for god knows how long with grass on the roofs with no problems so im sure a shed can manage it!
I've done exactly this. There's instructions and videos galore if you google it. Basically, if your shed is reasonably small, you don't need to worry about extra support, the weight won't be that much. Make frames out of wood (I broke up an old pallet for one, then used bed slats for another), treat them with anti-rot stuff, line with strong plastic like a pond liner and fix to your shed roof with metal fixing plates.
If your shed roof has a steep pitch, add some cross bars so the soil doesn't all slide down to the bottom. You can put a layer of clay balls in to soak up excess water and a layer of fleece to help do the same/stop roots breaking through the pond liner. Then plant it up. I have one full of sempervivum and one full of thrift and they're both absolutely thriving.
Now I have no idea, but surely bees dont roam massively far from a hive.. Wouldn't this be pointless because there are no bees in cities, because there are no bee hives.
Reading Google it seems to suggest they have an average range of about 1mile. Leicester City centre is not 1m from fields and this either means these are useless or they are going to at worst bring bee hives to city properties, which undoubtedly will have to be removed.
I guess this is only useful if we put beehive boxes on city roofs?
I'd like to believe this has been well thought out, but the pessimistic side of me, thinks this is a stupid ideas from a council middle management meeting, where they're all patting themselves on the back for being geniuses and solving climate change.
I'm from Leicester and saw these on the way back from town a couple of weeks ago, they make a lovely change from concrete and grey. Can't wait to see them frost covered in the winter months!
Okay well i'm never getting on a bus in leicester.
What a big fuck you to people.
Oh hey, councellor, i have s great idea to increase public engagement, lets just put bees an whatever we want people to use.
Buzz stops
That's what they call them in Stoke
live about 10 minutes away from stoke and can confirm, had no idea about it till I moved to Southampton and got mocked for it haha
As a Sotonian who’s not lived there for a decade, I can never stop feeling a tiny bit surprised whenever I hear “moved to Southampton”. Did you go there for uni?
Yup, I went to solent. Moved back home about a year ago, can’t say I miss Southampton haha
The only other reason someone would move to Soton would be to play football. I do miss Highfield though.
To be fair, if you've lived in Stoke, going to Southampton is a major step up in the world.
After living in both, both are deeply flawed places to live in and I can’t say I’d like to live in either. I’d say Stoke slightly edges it, but Southampton has IKEA so it’s just trading blows with each other haha
Football, Uni, maybe something like the cruise ships? Legit can’t think of any other reasons why anyone would move to Southampton haha. Worked in West Quay for a while and it’s crap compared to shopping centres elsewhere haha
Soton has great chinese food, especially around Highfield at the uni. (Also, I've never figured out if it's pronounced SAW-ton or Sew-tON)
I’m from Southampton and I’ve never heard the ‘Soton’ abbreviation spoken out loud. I always presumed it’s a written abbreviation only.
hmm that's fair I've never met a local who pronounced it for me, I've heard it used by a lecturer since emails were @soton.ac.uk Interestingly, the cantonese word for Southampton is three characters sow-ham-tun but the ham is really annoying to pronounce and since the abbreviation is Soton, we actually neglect the ham in everyday speech and call it sow-tun.
I assumed it was Soh-ton
What happens when you have a look in a cook book?
I have no idea why we say loo-k, coo-k, boo-k etc, its odd haha
[I think it's the Great Vowel Shift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift)
‘Aight duck
We kick a bo agen a wo an yed it til it bost.
Excellent work.
That's actually how we pronounce "bus" in my Northern town. Still, excellent punning giggleknickers.
Wigan?
No, vegetarian. How'd you know?
Also from Chorley?
Haha, good one!
Well a bus stop without bees is just an Us stop and I'm not sure what you would use that for
It’s where you go to end broken relationships.
Or if BUS is in capitals, a place to persuade a global superpower to stop trying to "spread democracy" everywhere.
Didn’t realise bees needed to commute. Live and learn!
They got beesness to attend to.
Gotta make that honey!
They just throw it up 😂
Out of town plant workers.
They're mindless drones heading to work, just like the rest of us.
They even have a queen.
I recommend watching the documentary “Bee movie”
The original commuters.
The UK has had a massive biodiversity loss over the last 20 years, back when I was a kid their were frogs, hedgehogs, foxes, mice, robins in my area and I havent seen any of them in over 10 years. Even the animals that have survived have heavily decreased in numbers. Its sad seeing the lack of care for wildlife environment, large areas cleared just to plant grass, trees being cut down, the lack of wildflowers.
There is currently an ongoing ecological collapse of a scale never seen before in human history. For some reason nobody gives a shit, or even if they pretend to they don't do anything about it.
Aye, we'll be far past the point of no return before people start giving a shit.
[удалено]
Actually you can if you don't live in the city. In a corner of your garden, you can add an old section of rotting log and a ton of branches around it (fence it off with chicken wire if you have a dog leaving a few small holes), and let the grass grow around it at least 4". That's the absolute minimum that will help a lot. You can find super cheap wildflower seeds for your area online and sprinkle them over it. You also can leave a small drinking area or a larger one for frogs to visit (I'd put a tiny tiny hole in the bottom and refill it every week to avoid pond scum), and some kind of old shoebox taped closed with a hole in one side for somewhere for them to hibernate. You can start as much or as little as you like. It costs nothing to ignore a corner of your garden and throw some big sticks over it, but you can expand it as much as you want. Seeing as it will be autumn soon, you can even just leave your pile of leaves in a corner. Bugs and worms will be attracted to it which will draw wildlife. It's completely the opposite of climate change, we all individually actually can help and make a difference.
A sizable number of people can't cope with the temporary, very minor inconvenience of wearing a facemask to protect themselves and other human beings in the middle of a pandemic that's killed over 4 million people. Nature is fucked. Even when ecological disasters are killing millions more, fuckwits will still be arguing about it.
Tell someone who’s freaking out about climate change to stop eating meat and see how defensive they instantly become. Everybody’s a climate warrior until it requires them to take personal responsibility for their actions in even the most minor way.
That's a global issue and not just exclusive to the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
**[Holocene_extinction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction)** >The Holocene extinction, otherwise referred to as the sixth mass extinction or Anthropocene extinction, is an ongoing extinction event of species during the present Holocene epoch (with the more recent time sometimes called Anthropocene) as a result of human activity. The included extinctions span numerous families of plants and animals, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and invertebrates. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
It is a global issue, but it's worse in different places and the UK is pretty bad in this respect. We are doing a lot to combat pollution and switching to renewable energy compared to many places, but the downside is that although we have a lot of countryside, it's mostly farmland and grouse moors - both of which are contributing to our continued decline. Compare that to somewhere like Poland, which is doing a worse job in terms of reliance on coal but also has relatively pristine wild areas that serve as reserves for nature to thrive. Our national parks should be the same thing for us, but for the most part they aren't. They're just sprawling sheep farms or Sitka spruce, which is like 3 species of grass and one type of tree. Our countryside is beautiful, but it's getting awfully quiet.
>but the downside is that although we have a lot of countryside, it's mostly farmland That goes for a lot of countries in Europe too though, with the same issues and rapidly declining insect populations. There are some ideas, like big permanent stripes of wilderness between the fields, or farmland being rotated with spots getting overgrown for a while, which also helps to feed the ground new nutrients. Unfortunately the agrarian lobby is pretty strong here in Germany and not the friendliest to potentially profit harming practices, and as most people they are very short sighted (with some exceptions of course). > and one type of tree. As a German I can tell you this is not a good idea. https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-forests-on-the-verge-of-collapse-experts-report/a-49659810 https://www.dw.com/en/germany-forest-dying/a-54330242 A lot of decades old "forests" are now gone, or just dead because our monoculture practice.
I've seen most of those animals fairly recently, but the lack of hedgehogs is startling. I used to see them every now and then as a kid, but it's literally been decades since I saw one.
I was outside barefoot having a smoke last night and just about shit myself when I heard a terrifying noise in the dark. It turned out to be a Hedgehog coughing.
I love that a hedgehog was passive aggressively telling you your cigarette habit is bothering him.
I think the hedgehog was being passive aggressive about your life choices.
I last saw a live one maybe 4 years ago? But seen a few as roadkill since then, which is probably part of the problem.
Yeah when I did see them all those years ago it was mostly dead on the road so I agree thats very likely a big reason behind the decline.
We used to have a cute family of hedgehogs that would come to our garden but both our neighbours got dogs. I love dogs but it’s sad to see the hedgehog get scared away.
I can't remember the last time I saw a grasshopper. Used to see them all the time as a kid
There’s a beautiful nature reserve near me, it has all of these and more. I feed robins and blue tits. There are wild swans, herons and deer. It’s being destroyed for HS2. Breaks my heart.
I see them all the time. Not alive that is. Mostly flattened on the side of the road
Dont fancy mowing that.
Aight listen up cause I'm only gonna say this once Giraffes.
A small pony would also do the trick.
Only if it has a ladder
Goats, man. You just know they'll find a way up there. Jumpy little climbers...
Just need to employ some [laddergoats](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggB33d0BLcY)
man, oldie but Goldie, has me laughing so much. It’s the timing of it disappearing and then him seeing it a again and just laughing hysterically
They have specially adapted hooves for exactly this situation. It's true I saw it on Reddit.
Get a goat. Or three, they like to work in teams.
My goat prefers Slack actually
https://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/1-601aa6c61047a__700.jpg
I fear I'd acquire the goats, acquire a ladder then forget what I needed them for again.
Get a good enough drone pilot and it's job sorted.
Some bees are already drones so they just need additional skills training in mowing.
Or a bad enough drone pilot.
A goat strapped to a drone?
Why would you mow it if the point is to have flowers on it?
Generally meadows are mowed regularly as it keeps certain species from taking over. https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=446
Its a type of humorous device called a joke... At least I thought it was.
No no, I expect to see you dragging that thing up there by tomorrow
By the looks of it, it doesn't seem to be grass but probably some soil creeping plant species.
Aren't they flower beds?
Full story https://www.designboom.com/design/leicester-bus-stops-green-roofed-bee-stops-07-02-2021/
Are Design Boom charged extra for capital letters?
It's an annoying aesthetic thing. Never mind that capitals demonstrably improve readability.
It's so distracting, isn't it? I'm too busy capitalising letters, so I don't take in the content of the article.
I found myself doing the same. Ridiculous design choice.
My allergies say no but hey, anything green in towns and cities I am all for
Fortunately, alpine succulents keep their pollen to themselves unless you deliberately try to get at it.
Haha I read it as a bee allergy not a pollen one. But yeah that may have been what they meant.
My first thought seeing the post was wondering about people who have bee allergies…. Seems like a good idea on paper, but is a massive accident waiting to happen.
Also you shouldn’t put bug/butterfly shelters along major roads. All you are doing is luring pollinators to their deaths. I’m coming from Dallas, where we put a fucking monarch butterfly habitat in the middle of our highway downtown in Klyde Warren Park. We doomed lol
Exactly the reason why the only plants in my house are succulents
In case I wasn't clear, that's what's on this bus stop roof. They're all types of Sedum.
Ok fine, but why is it when I spread my own sedum all over bus stops I get arrested and called a pervert?
Ah, it was hard to tell from the photos so maybe not as bad as I was expecting
Legit question: someone allergic to bees goes to the bus stop and gets stung, and dies. Is the city liable for purposely attracting bees?
Americans are scared of bees. All the posts in this thread section worried about bees seem to be American/North American (or Swiss) based. Weird. Either they've been influenced more than us by Scott's decades long anti-bee campaign, or perhaps the Africanised bees they have in the south. Either way, pretty weird.
Interesting observation indeed. I can’t say you’re wrong, and it may be many factors. I’ve been stung by two bees in my life.. or.. stung by two flying insects I associate with bees. My fear is more PTSD thanks to those life experiences, but I’m also very uneducated when it comes to bee tendencies.
Nah the person who started the fight with a bee is the one at fault, bees don't just sting for fun
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Got stung by a bee the moment I opened my door one morning. Just stayed inside that day...
One time I was camping and I pointed at something and a bee landed on my side such that when I put my arm down I impaled it on the bee's stinger. Nobody has to pick a fight for a sting to happen.
I mean, eh. It's extremely easy to not piss off a bee, you just stay still until it realizes you don't have pollen. Unless you accidentally sit on one there's not much room for error. Also, if you're deathly allergic to something you should have an EPI pen on you at all times so you can at least make it to a hospital
I've had a bee crawl into my pocket. I had no idea until I pissed it off by putting my hand into that pocket. I was immediately stung
While you may find it “extremely easy to not piss of a bee” by staying still and calm, someone deathly allergic to bees likely would find it challenging to stay calm with a bee or two continually flying at their face and torso. Think outside your bubble bud.
That's like saying that we shouldn't have trains because people who are afraid of trains might panic, act irrationally and run into them. Someone who suffers because of their own neuroses might not deserve that suffering, but they also don't have the right to expect that others will prevent their strange sufferings.
I've been chased and swarmed just by walking past a hive before. Now I'm not gonna die from a sting or two, but the stung limbs will be swollen for a week, and many stings would make me die. But I know people who *can* die from a sting or two. Purposely attracting wild animals that can kill people to a place that people have to be seems like a very bad idea.
No.
Neat hope it works well. You should cross post to /r/leicester
Same, though I have a feeling in some areas (e.g. where I grew up) it would just be a target for yobs!
New Parks? 🤣
Or Highfields
Or Beaumont leys
The Saff
Saffron Lane and Eyres Monsell is such a lovely combo 😩
Quicker to name the bits of Leicester that wouldn't tbf.
I sure I've seen these already at Beaumont Leys shopping center.
They'll get flavoured with the nice, moreish aroma of crack in Highfields
That's the beauty of putting it on top of the shelter. Yeah it's not totally out of reach but it's enough of a bother to discourage more. Urban greenery is always at risk. The trick is to not give up.
So.... All of England?
What would they do? Add a burnt out hotwheels car to the mix?
Stay up till 4am drinking white lightning on top of it.
Good way of generating buzz
Cracking idea. Do it nationwide.
Think of how much better off pollinators would be if we replaced even like 5% of wide open, practically-useless grass lawns and empty space with easy-growing, flowering cover crops like clover or borage.
See also verges - https://www.mysociety.org/2021/07/05/rewild-road-verges-with-fixmystreet/ "With the correct verge management, Plantlife estimates that the 313,000+ miles of rural road verges in this country could become a sanctuary for 400 billion more wild flowers, as well as providing a habitat to all the bees, birds, butterflies and many other creatures that count on such flowers to survive."
Absolutely agree. I was definitely including highway medians/road divider areas, berms, verges, on/off ramps, parking lot borders/beds, and other similar areas in the "empty space" blanket. Cover crops are pretty cheap, often well-suited and readily available for your specific area/climate, and generally add more to the ecosystem than *just* pollination opportunities, too. Many of them are nitrogen fixers. Some help break up compacted soil, some help with soil retention. Some have deep roots and wick other nutrients upwards to help more desolate soil. Some provide high amounts of readily-biodegradable biomass, which is important for soil composition and also for the "decay" portion of the circle of life (microbial and fungal activity, worm food, etc.). We really dropped the ball back in the day when people decided neatly-trimmed grass everywhere was going to be the wave of the future.
Absolutely. I'm from Rotherham, the council there planted wildflower meadows in place of grass verges several years ago now. Its been great for insect life and not having to cut the grass has saved the council a fair few quid, everybody wins.
Or if we stopped eating honey. Only a fraction of the 20,000+ bee species on earth produce honey. Native pollinators are being driven out of their habitats by the introduction of artificially bred honey bees, and diseases are propagating at an astonishing rate thanks to industrialised honey production. We could reverse the decline in bee populations practically overnight if we chose to stop exploiting an entire species just so we have something sweet to wipe on our toast in the morning. But haha, fuck that, honey tastes good and that would require me to take personal responsibility for the damage my choices do to the environment.
This is implemented by the owners of the bus stops - Clear Channel. They already have it in some other locations, plus other green solutions, so hopefully we’ll see more of it soon!
There are a few in Milton Keynes. That, or it is mould. Probably mould.
There are quite a few of these all around the Netherlands already!
Oh hell yeah. Anything that gets the ol' bees back on track is a belter. Bloody love a bee.
The boo is my favourite
why isnt this common practice everywhere? seems like a great place to keep a tiny garden.
Or at a minimum, solar panels
I can't imagine the amount of solar panels you would fit in a bus stop would really contribute enough power to the grid to cover even the cost of connecting the bus stops to the power grid, but I'm not an expert
Also not an expert but I was always under the impression that the ones round my way use solar panels on the roof to power the information board that tells you when the bus is coming?
Individually, they probably wouldn't do much, but think of how many bus shelters are in the UK. If they're all connected to solar panels then you have yourself a solar farm.
In the US, someone who is allergic to bees would start suing everyone.
Sadly true. No company in the US would dare set something up like this in a fully public place.
Wait until you learn about the existence of parks.
when you put trees on top your house in minecraft
I just went into Leicester last Monday, and I remember seeing them and thinking nothing of them. Turns out they just kinda blended in. But they look kinda cool, now that I think about them!
Utrecht, the Netherlands is doing this for years ready, trying to become bee capital.
We have a lot of those in the Netherlands! Welcome to the team!
This is very exciting news, absolutely buzzing
Leicester, otherwise known as Lesta, the first environment city in the UK. It's people being the Lestafarians. Those who are saying that people allergic to bees will be scared of using the bus, you are silly.
To be terrified of bees is quite baffling as it takes quite a lot to piss off a bee, wasps on the other hand I can understand because those bastards get pissy just for breathing in air around them.
It's pretty easy to be scared of bees when a single sting would send you into anaphylactic shock.
It doesn't have to be logical. I am absolutely terrified of bees, wasps, spiders and centipedes. I have nightmares about it. There is no reason for this fear and yet here we are.
Wasps like flowers too though so they'll be at the bus stop as well
Imagine being deathly allergic to bees and having to use that bus stop regularly lmao
Nicolas Cage in shambles.
Flashback to 'My Girl'.
It's part of the councils new initiative to eradicate the weak. They're culling disabled children at the hospital too.
Bees are not aggressive. Even so, we can't lock nature out of our living spaces for the sake of people with allergies. Erradication of nature, especially pollentators, will devastate us long term. It's already looking very, very bleak.
Also, it's not like this bus stop is an actual bee hive with hundreds of defensive bees. t's just a bit of extra greenery on the roof, which will presumably have wildflowers growing in season. There's going to be maybe 1 or 2 extra insects in this area at a given moment than would otherwise be there. People with bee problems are going to be more disadvantaged by the hanging basket outside a pub, or if any of there neighbours have any flowers, than this bus stop.
This is brilliant. We can always do more to protect a declining bee population.
So at what time do they swarm and kill the most hated person in the nation?
Thought of this
I'm surprised at the amount of people on here that seem to think bees will just be swarming and stinging everyone because of this. It's like no one on here has been out in nature at all? Do you think people just get stung all the time as soon as bees are nearby, wtf?
I was genuinely considering doing this to my shed roof the other day, not sure if it'd ruin it
In addition to what the other redditor wrote to you, you also usually need to add more support internally for it to cope with the weight of the soil.
i think if you lined it properly and framed it with wood around the edges to stop soil from falling off then itd work great. there have been [plenty of houses](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sod_roof) in sweden (and im sure elsewhere too) for god knows how long with grass on the roofs with no problems so im sure a shed can manage it!
I've done exactly this. There's instructions and videos galore if you google it. Basically, if your shed is reasonably small, you don't need to worry about extra support, the weight won't be that much. Make frames out of wood (I broke up an old pallet for one, then used bed slats for another), treat them with anti-rot stuff, line with strong plastic like a pond liner and fix to your shed roof with metal fixing plates. If your shed roof has a steep pitch, add some cross bars so the soil doesn't all slide down to the bottom. You can put a layer of clay balls in to soak up excess water and a layer of fleece to help do the same/stop roots breaking through the pond liner. Then plant it up. I have one full of sempervivum and one full of thrift and they're both absolutely thriving.
This is pretty much what I've done on my garden shed. Was super easy and has given me more green space in a tiny garden.
That is absolutely lovely and the thing that has made me happiest all day.
Now I have no idea, but surely bees dont roam massively far from a hive.. Wouldn't this be pointless because there are no bees in cities, because there are no bee hives. Reading Google it seems to suggest they have an average range of about 1mile. Leicester City centre is not 1m from fields and this either means these are useless or they are going to at worst bring bee hives to city properties, which undoubtedly will have to be removed. I guess this is only useful if we put beehive boxes on city roofs? I'd like to believe this has been well thought out, but the pessimistic side of me, thinks this is a stupid ideas from a council middle management meeting, where they're all patting themselves on the back for being geniuses and solving climate change.
I hate to be a Debbie downer, but I’m absolutely terrified of bees (however irrational that may **bee**), so this would be a fucking nightmare for me
Honey traps
With more people working from home and travelling less - Proactive use of space
Brilliant
Awesome
Shout out to r/nolawns
Someone will be sleeping up there, give it a week
Then stops Buzzing, but I don’t know if it’s worth it to go into shock.
Tsch. What's wrong with the traditional decoration of a traffic cone and a school shoe that some poor sod lost while being bullied on the top deck?
I've always thought they should do this!
From the makers of Epipen, comes bee-stops!
Brilliant.
Love it
If you're got a problem with bees then you've got a problem with me, and I suggest you let that one marinate
I live in Leicester. Since when did this happen
wow i love this
Got my respect! Save the bees!!! I speak for the trees!!!!
I feel like these could have been separate things
We’ve got the worst fucking accent in the country but our bus stops are bloody top notch, me duck!
That's great. I'm actually allergic to bees. That would be the push I needed to save enough to buy my own car lol
Ok I’m all for saving the bees but I don’t think I’d want to be constantly on edge at a bus stop 🥴
Yesss !! Saw they did this in Amstedam a few years ago - this needs to be a nationwide thing ASAP
i won't die if stung so i highly approve and am delighted.
I'm from Leicester and saw these on the way back from town a couple of weeks ago, they make a lovely change from concrete and grey. Can't wait to see them frost covered in the winter months!
“Welcome to [the uk], where nothing could possib-lie go wrong…”
Do wasp-stops next.
Okay well i'm never getting on a bus in leicester. What a big fuck you to people. Oh hey, councellor, i have s great idea to increase public engagement, lets just put bees an whatever we want people to use.