Honey Bees stop flying when the temperature drops down into the 50s (F). They stay inside their hive in what is called a winter cluster which means they get into a big huddle. There is no point to flying outside of the hive as there are no flowers in bloom, hence no pollen or nectar is available and the cold could kill them. The colder the outside temperature, the more compact the cluster becomes.

The object of this clustering is to keep themselves warm, so warm that the temperature in the centre of this cluster, where the Queen Bee stays, is kept at about 80 (F). The outer edge of the cluster is about 46 to 48 (F).

The worker bees create heat by shivering and they also move back and forth between the inner part of the cluster and the outer part. In this way no bee will freeze.

Perhaps the most damaging aspect is the undermining of confidence in legislation relating to sustainable technologies. Potential investors are faced with making an enormous financial commitment in the face of number of uncertainties; longevity of the technologies, capital cost of the installation and financial return on that cost.

For the first time, under the FiT legislation the log jam began to clear; income was guaranteed for 25 years and Government backed, PV technology was tried and tested and had reduced in price and critically (as a result of these factors) the banks felt confident enough to start lending money for PV installations.

The first big step backwards came last year when the Government decided to limit FiT’s to installations under 5 megawatts. This meant that a number of big, commercially driven PV arrays became unviable over night. The second blow came in December with the reduction in the level of FiT’s.

The Government made the following statement in one of its recent publications;

To facilitate the investment in renewables that the country needs, investors need to have confidence in a stable and predictable commercial environment for those investments. The scale and pace of the changes now proposed was a ‘shock’ for the industry and the suddenness of their introduction has damaged investor confidence across the whole energy sector. This damage would not have occurred if the Government had recognised the unsustainable rate of the expansion of solar installations at an earlier date, something which ought to have been identified by Ministers and officials sooner than it appears to have been. The analysis of the impact on jobs in the Impact Assessment is also seriously inadequate.

We in the UK are not alone in introducing FiT’s as a way of reducing our dependency on fossil based energy generation. Most northern European countries have done the same. In Germany for instance it has led to around 13% of the nation’s energy being generated from renewable sources.

So, as the Government awaits the result of a High Court appeal on it’s decision to apply it’s Fit reduction retrospectively we’re left wondering whether the Government now see the UK’s bold carbon reduction commitments as an essential necessity or an unaffordable luxury?

We’re over the moon to welcome the new hybrid buses soon to be trialled on the extended bus service 1/1b with its new terminus of Lingfield Point. Stopping at three locations around Lingfield Point, this new service will take you into town every 30 minutes.  This, in addition to the regular service running past Lingfield Point, means our neighbourhood is one of the best served, most accessible business parks in the region.

Local bus company Arriva North East will be trialling a new hybrid vehicle on the newly extended 1,1b service from this January.  The current route runs from Tow Law, Crook and Bishop Auckland to Darlington Town Centre and  from 2 January will be extended to Lingfield Point via Darlington College/University, funded by the Department for Transport through the Local Sustainable Transport Fund.

The bus being trialled on the route is a state-of-the-art vehicle which is powered using an electric engine. If the trial proves a success the company will take delivery of 7 new hybrid vehicles in the summer of 2012.

The investment comes following a partnership between Arriva North East and ourselves working with Team Local Motion to champion even more environmentally-friendly means of transport being available to the people of Darlington.

Nigel Featham, Managing Director for Arriva North East, said: “The extension of the service will ensure that we continue to improve our customers’ journey experience, and the testing of the hybrid vehicle is another real benefit for the area. We know that value for money and reliability are very important to our customers, however more and more we are hearing that the environment is another key consideration.”

Councillor David Lyonette, Darlington Borough Council’s Cabinet Member for Transport said ” The Department of Transport funding will benefit people locally and regionally by providing improved access to education as the route now extends past Darlington College and the University, and to jobs at Lingfield Point too, which will assist future economic development. I’m delighted Team Local Motion has been able to secure this development.”

John Orchard, Director of Marchday commented “We think it’s great news that this service is being extended to include our community. It is important that our site is well-served by buses, with over 1,800 staff based at Lingfield Point, and a great deal of them living in and around Darlington,  it will certainly make the choice to travel to work by bus far easier.

For Lingfield Point to be served by hybrid buses is very appropriate as it fits perfectly with our ethos of sustainability – and the vision of our masterplan – setting out to make Lingfield Point one of the most environmentally-friendly developments in the UK “

So don’t forget your new year’s resolution … hop on our new bus service …. you’d be surprised how easy it really is!

Colin, our Lingfield Point Bee Keeper

In a quiet corner in the Lingfield Allotments there is a hive of activity!  As you may already know we are very fortunate here at Lingfield Point to have our very own bees.  We have two strains of bee – and Italian and a strain all the way from New Zealand – we’re very continental!

Both hives have produced a decent amount of honey despite early set backs.  In September we extracted our fourth batch of honey and Jenny from Marchday was lucky enough to bee there!

“I was a little wary as Colin, our resident Lingfield Point Bee keeper had been stung on a number of occasions, so I donned the bee keeper suit and triple checked it for holes!”

“We start by smoking the bees, this calms them and makes them less aggressive.  Then, once the lid is off the hive, it’s time to remove the ‘supers’, these are the frames where the bees build up the hexagonal wax cells (comb) and where the honey gets stored.

“With a little shake and a brush for those stubborn bees, the supers are removed and put neatly into a storage box.  The bees are, of course, pretty grumpy about us taking their honey, so they are all around us and it feels like they are trying to get into our suits!  One manages to and poor Colin is stung on his hand – poor bee too, honeybees are the only bees that die after they sting.

“We then take the Supers into a clean and sterile room, which is kept nice and warm. The supers are then carefully placed into a honey extractor – this is a manual spinning machine, which requires a fair amount of time and patience to spin the honey out of the combs.

“The honey then has a little time to settle, so all the waxy bits from the comb can float to the top and can be skimmed off (this is re-used to feed the bees).  The honey is then put into jars. 

“In the end, our Lingfield honey bees produced about 25lbs (50 jars) of honey and with the hives now established, fingers crossed next year will be even better.

Yum!

Interesting facts about honey bees

1. There are three types of bees in the hive – Queen, Worker and Drones.
2. Queens can live for up to 5 years.
3. Honeybees are the only insects that produce food for humans.
4. Just a single hive contains approximately 40-45,000 bees.
5. Bees can recognize individual human faces.
6. The average worker bee produces about 1/12th teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.  A worker bee lives for about 6 weeks.
7. A hive of bees will fly 90,000 miles, the equivalent of three orbits around the earth to collect 1 kg of honey.
8. It takes one ounce of honey to fuel a bee’s flight around the world.
9. A honey bee visits 50 to 100 flowers during a collection trip
10. According to Albert Einstein, If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live

Wayne Hemingway in the affordable apartments he designed for key workers in Manchester. Photo: Don McPhee.

At Marchday we’re big fans of the Fashion Trendsetter turned Community Guru Wayne Hemingway. We were really impressed by the special qualities Wayne’s company Hemingwaydesign brought to the Taylor Wimpey scheme, Staiths Southbank in Gateshead.

Space for people to get together.

The scheme reminded us of much of the good stuff we saw in Malmo, Sweden earlier this year where the design of the space for community interaction between the buildings is given equal importance to the design of the buildings themselves.

We share many values in relation to creating communities, regeneration and design and read with interest Wayne’s recent comments about successful communities in The Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/housing-network/2011/sep/27/people-decent-housing-successful-communities?INTCMP=SRCH

We’re excited about creating the first new homes at Lingfield Point next year and making real the sustainable mixed community around our existing business community. We hope Mr Hemingway would approve of our plans!

The Marchday Literary Committee meet for a good yarn.

Here at Marchday we’re keen on Twitter and we love a good story.

To combine the two and celebrate the launch of Marchday’s newest building YARN@Lingfield Point, Darlington we’re inviting budding wordsmiths to spin us a yarn on twitter. All you have to do is write a ‘ripping yarn’ in 130 characters or less and add the hashtag #spinayarn to bring it up to the Twitter limit of 140.  You choose the subject but it needs to be short, razor sharp and to the point. The competition closes on November 11. The Marchday Literary Committee will then sit to choose the winner and award the much coveted Golden Bobbin. The winner will be announced week commencing 5 December.

‘Yarn is aimed at small companies who want to punch above their weight and impress their customers. The space is some of the most memorable we’ve created. At Yarn our customers may only pay for a small amount of space but benefit from all the fantastic communal facilities. We all love twitter and thought it would be fun to run the competition and put the Golden Bobbin up for grabs.’ said John Orchard, a Director at Marchday.

Just a few weeks after the launch of YARN more than half of the space is already let. However, there are still spaces of between 250sqft and 1,000sqft available.

John tweets as @johnny_niblick, Tim as @timstephen and collectively Marchday tweets as @marchdaygroup. You can follow the goings on at Lingfield Point at @lingfieldpoint or the wonderful musings of @chairmaneddie.

So, come on, give it a go!

The Mission, Lochinver.

Marchday’s John Orchard writes about his recent cycling odyssey and a social project which left him full of inspiration;

I was recently lucky enough to spend 3 days in the Highlands; just me, the bike and the spendors of Sutherland.

While cycling through Lochinver I stumbled on an eye catching new building with a memorable name, ‘The Mission’. What at first appeared to be a simple cafe turned out to be one of the most remarkable community projects I’ve come across.

Lochinver has a rich fishing heritage. The Victorian fisherman’s mission fell into decline and finally closed a few years ago. A committee came together to resurrect not the building but the concept of a community hub. It successfully secured £500m of BIG lottery funding and set about creating The Mission from the ashes of the old institution.

At the same time they set about finding somebody to breath life into the building and found it in Peter Cullen, a celebrated young chef who has come home to raise his family away from the hustle of the big cities.

The concept is a simple one; to create a true community building where locals, visitors and fishermen can eat and get together; to create jobs for local jobless and provide them with training in catering and hospitality. Amazingly it is a real success and runs totally unsubsidised.

There is no licenced bar to ensure that children are welcome and no main course costs more than £6.50 – not remarkable in itself until you taste the food! Mr Cullen uses all his experience of working with Michelin chefs to serve up the most amazing local fare. He barters finest ingredients, providing meals in return; on the day I visited he served up the most amazing mackerel on a bed of haddock rissoto. Fresh caught langoustine and crab feature prominently on the menu.

A damn fine fish supper!

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Yarn is Marchday’s latest flexible workspace aimed at SME’s.

John Orchard, director of Marchday gave some insight into the idea;

“We worked with Glasgow based workplace gurus Graven Images to produce an interior which is strikingly different from the norm. We’ve aimed Yarn at small and medium size businesses who want to be associated with something memorable and stylish. They may only want to pay for a small dedicated office space but have use of all the communal meeting and breakout rooms. The very fact they’ve chosen to work in this building says a lot about their business to their clients.”

Space within Yarn has already started to let. For further details contact Sara Williams at sara.williams@lingfieldpoint.co.uk or David Jackson at david.jackson@sandersonweatherall.com, or you can always pop in to the management suite and say “how d’you do”!