Meet our bees

The Gallery Oldham beehives have long been a visitor favourite. Their location on our second floor balcony gives everyone a close up view of the bees at work.

Since 2023 we have been hosting beehives with Hive5 Manchester. The two beehives on site contain around 50,000 and 80,000 bees and one queen per hive. They can produce around 12-15kg of honey per year.

The worker bees can fly up to 3miles to collect pollen and nectar but will prefer to stay closer to the hives if they can find enough forage. For this reason the sedum roof of Oldham Library is one of the places that our bees visit regularly on their travels.

You can find out more about bees by visiting the displays on our Bee Landing. Honeybees are the only species of bee that make honey and are native to the UK and Europe. Humans have been working alongside honeybees for centuries, with the first known record of honey harvesting from a cave painting dated around 8000bc!

Check out our What’s On page for bee-related events. Learn all about bees with Gallery Oldham’s beekeeper, Damson from Hive5, make a bee hotel and then watch her inspect the hives on our roof through the balcony window.