Boards for Bees

MARK PASSMORE/APEX

RECYCLED HIVE: Volunteers use plastic bodyboards collected from beaches to build better homes for honeybees.

COURTESY OF QUINCE HONEY FARM

When people head to beaches in the United Kingdom, they often bring along bodyboards to ride the waves. But the flimsy boards—which are made of a lightweight plastic called polystyrene—break easily. Their pieces often end up littering shorelines. Now an environmental group is reusing the wrecked boards for a sweet purpose—to help honeybees.

Last summer, volunteers with Keep Britain Tidy collected a whopping 480 discarded bodyboards from two beaches in the U.K. The organization donated most of the boards to a local farm to line its beehives. Heat can’t easily pass through polystyrene, making it an excellent insulator and great for keeping bees warm during the winter.

RELATED CONTENT

Text-to-Speech