Broadway Manor Cottages

At Broadway Manor Cottages in the Cotswolds we encourage wildlife and wild and native flowers in our grounds, avoiding the use of  insecticides and pesticides, so a few weeks ago when Help Save Bees appealed on Twitter for favourable locations, such as orchards, for beekeepers to keep honey bees, we replied to see whether we could help. 

British bees are dwindling at an alarming rate and their extinction would have a disastrous effect on our flora and fauna. Help Save Bees was set up by Damian Grounds to raise awareness of the plight of British bees and highlight ways in which their survival can be protected by providing suitable and sustainable habitats for honey, bumble or solitary bees. Within a few days of our ‘tweet’ we were contacted by a local friendly beekeeper to see whether our grounds would be a suitable location for one or more beehives.

Our guests are invited to enjoy the grounds surrounding their holiday cottage during their stay, including our orchard of pear, apple, cherry, greengage, plum and damson trees, which all bear beautiful fragrant blossom ideal for pollen collecting honey bees. Siting one or more beehives in the orchard would be ideal, but the more isolated spot in the middle of our adjacent field is a better option leaving the bees alone and away from any disturbance.

The field is on the edge of Broadway in close proximity to a number of gardens with no great expanses of wheat or oilseed rape nearby which will hopefully mean that the bees will produce a fragrant polyfloral honey. But before a beehive can be sited we need some honey bees!

The beekeeper, who will be tending the hives and looking after the bees, placed a swarm box on top of one of our sheds. The wooden box contained a small piece of honeycomb and a pheromone attractive to bees. Within a few days some scout bees took up residence and we were hopeful that a swarm would follow. Sure enough early one evening a swarming cloud of honey bees descended on the garden but the bees did not make the box their home, they headed for a branch of a nearby Leylandii tree!

The following morning to coax the swarm out of the tree, a rope skep was placed on the ground nearby.  The beekeeper then cut off the branch that the swarm was hanging from and covered it with the skep. By that evening, all of the bees had moved from the tree to the skep and he packed it up and took it away to transfer the swarm to an apiary to check them for disease before introducing them to a hive in our field, maybe with a newly introduced queen that he has been breeding.

It seems we have been very lucky in June: the following day a much larger swarm of honey bees moved into the swarm box. This has now been collected and we hope the swarm will populate a further hive.

Broadway Manor Cottages has been shortlisted for two 2010 Worcestershire Welcome Awards. Located in the peaceful extensive grounds of a Cotswold Manor House dating back to the 16th century the cottages, located on a quiet rural lane in Broadway, have been shortlisted in the Stunning Self-Catering category. The business’s dedication to sustainability and Green Tourism, already recognised by their Green Tourism Business Scheme Silver Award, has also been reflected in their nomination for a Sustainable Tourism Award.

“We are very proud to be nominated for two prestigious awards.” said Debbie Williamson, owner of Broadway Manor Cottages. “We thank our guests for voting for us and look forward to the Awards Ceremony on 30th June”.

Dry stone walling is an ancient rural skill that you can learn whilst staying in one of our Cotswold holiday cottages in Broadway. Courses in the art of dry stone walling are held throughout the year by the Cotswold Conservation Board in a number of locations in the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Dry stone walls are an important feature of the British landscape and have existed in the Cotswolds since the Neolithic period 6,000 year ago when many of the long barrows on the Cotswolds had dry stone walls at their entrances and along their sides. Built of the local Jurassic limestone, most of the dry stone walls which can be seen today in the upland areas of the Cotswolds, separating the fields and lining the roadsides, were mostly built in the 18th and 19th centuries. 

Over recent years, many walls have fallen into a state of disrepair as the walls are expensive to maintain and can be replaced more cheaply with fencing. The art of dry stone walling was a dying skill throughout Britain. Today, however, dry stone walling is prospering with the recognition of the environmental value of walls, being a sustainable product made from natural materials.

With regular maintenance a dry stone wall can stand for well over 100 years and at the same time offer shelter and habitat for a wide variety of flora (walls are a particularly important habitats for lichens, mosses and ferns) and fauna (insects, spiders, snails, birds and small mammals such as voles, mice and rabbits).

This year, 2 day dry stone walling courses (£80 per person) are being held in the Cotswolds in Long Compton near Shipston-on-Stour starting on Saturday 1st May, near Tetbury starting on Saturday 17th April and Saturday 8th May, in Lansdown on Saturday 5th June and Saturday 24th July, at Huntsmans Quarry near Stow-on-the-Wold on Saturday 7th August, at Crickley Hill overlooking the Vale of Gloucester on Saturday 28th August and in Bradford on Avon on Saturday 2nd October.

Our Cotswold holiday cottages at Broadway Manor Cottages are open all year round and are an ideal location to stay whilst attending a dry stone walling course and learning a traditional rural skill. For more information about our holiday cottages in Broadway and the dry stone walling courses in the Cotswolds contact us.