Charity Buddy

24/04/2025

If you’re aged 18-30 and want to learn some important field skills, check out the event scheduled at our rewilding site at Maple Farm. This event is hosted by our partners, Youngwilders 👇
https://www.instagram.com/youngwilders_

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/wayfinders-birds-and-scrubland-weekend-at-maple-farm-tickets-1334080945019?utm_experiment=test_share_listing&aff=ebdsshios

We’ll explore the birds which live on Maple Farm, learn about basic bird ID, and learn to conduct a breeding bird survey

22/04/2025

Our rewilding partners at Maple Farm, Youngwilders, have made a fabulous video with two amazing filmmakers- If you’re interested in nature recovery please watch!

In this video, created by two film makers who recently visited Maple Farm, Jack (one of the Directors from our rewilding partners, Youngwilders, talks openly about the problems facing nature in he UK, and how their organisation is encouraging young people to learn and become directly involved in nat

28/01/2025

We're a bit late posting, but here is the last activity of 2024. A volunteer day spent at Maple Farm, sowing Yellow Rattle to help restore our ex-grazing land, and encourage the development of wildflower meadows 💚 Thank you to our partners, Youngwilders.

Conor McNeil, our Wild Steward, ended 2024’s physical activities at Maple Farm by leading the volunteers in a planting day of Yellow Rattle and hosting a small workshop about the movements of predator-prey populations, and the impact they have on the landscape. Yellow Rattle is is used to create o...

08/11/2024

We know that most honeybees in the UK exist in commercial hives, being "farmed" for honey. This takes its toll on the wild honeybee population, along with the use of herbicides, pesticides, declining natural habitat (they like to live in tree hollows), and of course there are the usual predators to contend with.

Charity Buddy is on a mission to create more natural-style bee-centric hives to help honeybees to thrive, and embarked on a journey to provide local honeybees with suitable hives that they could freely occupy.

During 2024, our Charity has installed 5 natural style hives within our rewilding site in Surrey, however, these hives were both heavy to handle, and costly to produce, so with that in mind, one of our recent workshop attendees has created a hive from reclaimed materials which is both affordable and light enough for members of the general public to install themselves.

We'd like to help wild honeybees enjoy safe, insulated hives through out the UK, and so we are offering our hives for sale at cost for £200.

All we ask is that if you'd like to order a hive, you are confident that you have enough suitable forage locally to sustain the bees that will occupy the hive.

Want to find out more?
https://www.charitybuddy.org/honeybees

05/10/2024

We’ve undertaken an inspection of the bee hives before the colder weather sets in. The results are really encouraging. Out of 7 hives, 6 are very active with the bees continuing to bring in pollen. They have good stores of honey for the winter and the bees look healthy. No chemicals have been used against potential disease, and even where the hive has been “robbed” (naturally by other insects) there are no signs of dead bees or disease.

This is really positive and we hope our bees will survive the winter and we hope to welcome a swarm into the empty hive in Spring.

03/10/2024

An update on our project to create new habitats for colonies. A couple of weeks ago, in partnership with the two small test ponds were dug in 2 areas within our site, to see if they could be viable sites for larger ponds. Looks like they’re going to work! Watch this space as the project will begin in full in Spring/Summer 2025 if the water can be naturally retained.

20/09/2024

Today marked the start of a new project. We are really keen to see how we can help the Great Crested Newt by developing new habitat at our rewilding site.

Major loss of habitat has led to a sharp decline in the numbers of Great Crested Newts throughout the UK, and we are keen to provide a viable new habitat for them at Maple Farm. Today marks the start of the our project to help save these important amphibians.

23/08/2024

We are always keen to showcase the exciting work we are doing within our rewilding site in Alfold, Surrey. Our latest blog post highlights the newly introduced 'Wayfinders' weekends, where groups of young people enjoyed 3 weekends of practical nature based learning.

The Wayfinders weekends were a series of 3 on-site weekends at Maple Farm, that offered practical, field skills for young people covering grassland and birds , invertebrates and woodland, bats and reptiles The feedback from these sessions has been amazing, and by the last workshop, we were ove

21/08/2024

New footbridges installed over the river Lox and the drainage ditch replacing the styles and stock fencing. Hopefully this will enable wildlife to move more freely through the area (and hopefully any dog owners will respect the wildlife’s need for non disturbance)

12/08/2024

Please click the link and nominate us for the chance of winning a special £5,000 grant that could further benefit our rewilding 🌳🍂🐾 efforts :)

We could receive £5,000 in the Movement for Good draw.

08/08/2024

Lovely to see young people learning about growing organic food ❤️

27/07/2024

It’s holiday season 🏝️so please think very carefully before hopping on that horse drawn carriage 🐴, riding an 🐘 or 🐫 , or having your photo 📸 taken with an animal 🙈 . There’s so much animal cruelty involved behind the scenes even though it may appear ok on face value. 😡

Today Animals Asia launches its ethical tourism campaign and calls on the new UK government to effectively implement animal welfare law to protect animals abroad.

17/07/2024

Lovely to see the Forest School children doing some planting at our Charity’s allotment. 💚🌱🪴
.and.gill.forest.school

16/07/2024

We had a great weekend on 6/7th July creating natural style tree hives for wild honey bees. 🐝
Thank you to our amazingly dedicated participants, Jason Barrett Jason Dare, Danny from The Macs Farm Brian from Jack and Gill Childcare and Forest School Alex Carr, Miri and our fantastic natural bee keeping expert Matt Somerville from Bee Kind Hives.💚

Thank you to the Community Foundation for Surrey and The Surrey Hills Trust for making this possible.

At Maple Farm in Surrey, we have successfully crafted some natural style log hives to provide a wonderful habitat for wild honey bees. We are now able to make more of them and help bees further afield to thrive!

11/07/2024

It only takes a minute to give our charity a great opportunity to win a grant of £1000. Please click on the link to nominate us. We'd really appreciate it 🥰🙏

06/07/2024