🐝 Coláiste Muire is part of a massive project to plant 1200 mini fruit tree orchards all around Ireland. The project called DCs for Bees is an initiative of Host in Ireland which is an alliance of Ireland’s Data Hosting companies.
🐝Working in collaboration with the Irish National Biodiversity Centre this project will enable Ireland, for the first time to track concurrent pollination success.
🐝This is only made possible by planting uniform orchards in multiple locations within the one growing season (Nov 2021 – March 2022).
🐝Each mini orchard consists of the same 5 trees – three Apple varieties, one Plum and one Pear that can each cross pollinate each other.
🐝It is a very positive action for pollinators but is also a great citizen science experimental project.
🐝The National Biodiversity Data Centre intends to set up some monitoring around these trees in the future e.g.,10-minute flower insect timed counts in spring and then counting the number of apples/pears/plums in autumn (which gives you a very rough idea of pollination service).
🐝In Cobh 10 orchards are being planted around the community.
🐝Great fun and citizen science for the students to engage in over the season and years ahead.
We have delivered each set of 5 trees from Host in Ireland and Cobh Tidy Towns supplied stakes, ties, and signage to ensure that the trees get the best start possible.
📷 Ms. White