PUPILS from a Padiham primary school have been spreading the buzz by learning the basics of beekeeping.

St Leonard’s Primary School’s project, supported by housing group Calico, is helping pupils to understand the importance of bees and beekeeping, and how honey is made.

Wearing full protective gear, the children were able to see an active hive that is already producing honey, with the supervision of beekeeper and Calico tenant Carl Bleasdale.

Carl said: “We need to have bees to produce our apples, our fruit, our vegetables, our trees – without the bees, we wouldn’t survive. It's teaching the children about why we need bees and why we should look after them.

“We started off just with one beehive and now we've got two. We're going to get an observational beehive for the children so they can see what's happening.”