Paul Searle, 68, has transformed his allotment garden in Penarth into a haven for wildlife – including bees. A former petrochemical engineer, Paul can often be seen helping older residents in the neighbourhood, “I suppose I'm a philanthropist of sorts,” he says, “I enjoy helping others to banish negativity and embrace the positivity in life. I believe the greatest wealth is to be content with little.”
In Jon Pountney's own words:
“Jacqui and Paul are the bee keepers in the project. They’ve got an allotment in Cogan in Penarth. Quite a funny afternoon, the outfits and the kind of paraphernalia are quite interesting. It’s all, it looks quite Victorian in a way and I suppose the outfits do kind of date from that era. There’s kind of old fashioned feel to it, with the, you know, there’s a can that emits smoke, and the smoke is produced by pinecones I think in this case. I don’t know if different smoke produces a different effect on the bees but really interesting afternoon with Jacqui and Paul. And basically, you know, they’re fully suited in safety gear and I’m there in a hoody and they said don’t come too close and also if a bee or bees come near to you their advice was just to run which didn’t fill me with the greatest confidence! And I actually did have to, at one point a bee was very, very close staring me out, making a very alarming noise that I’ve never heard a bee make before, very high pitched buzzing, so I did leg it in the opposite direction. Hope I didn’t miss too many photos at that point.”