How to promote the rich variety of life at a Siemens office location

From the depths of the seas and the evergreen rainforests to the highest mountains – the Earth is teeming with life everywhere. We share our world with millions and millions of other species. Biodiversity is what makes the Earth the unique ecosystem that has developed over billions of years. However, no other living thing has had as much influence on the Earth over time as human beings. We have reshaped our planet to best serve our needs.

For a long time, the focus was not on sustainability, but on productivity when using existing resources. Biodiversity has suffered from this development: the wide variety of species, the number of genetic variants within the species and the range of ecosystems.

Companies have also contributed to these developments. Soil sealing, for example, and land use at production and office locations deprive many species of their natural habitats. For this reason, the promotion of biodiversity is an important aspect of environmental management at Siemens. At Siemens, we strive to be a role model in terms of responsible business behavior, and therefore encourage measures that help to preserve biodiversity at our sites.

After creating a wildflower meadow as our contribution to Earth Day 2021, we are particularly proud to welcome new colleagues to the Siemens location in Munich Perlach this year: four colonies of bees! #SieBees

By collecting pollen and nectar, bees are the most important plant pollinators, and thus contribute significantly to biodiversity. They enable and promote the rich variety of plants; without bees, fruit trees could not produce fruits, and flowers could not produce seeds.

We are pleased that these busy little helpers have now found a new home in Munich Perlach. The four swarms, each with about 20,000 bees, which IT employee and hobby-beekeeper Claus Oberhagemann has catched at the Daveichtenhof, can look forward to a rich feast. Within a “gathering radius” of 1.5 km, there are extensive food sources that are missing in the countryside: flowering ground cover, blue bugle, ground ivy, hawthorn shrubs as well as insect-friendly perennials and seed mixtures that can be found on the non-mown areas. In addition, there are the linden trees in Neuperlach South as well as the plants that residents grow in their gardens. “At home” in the affluent suburbs south of Munich, however, the colonies have to be fed. The persistently wet and windy weather has reduced the already low supply of food even more. The bees there lack sufficient pollen and nectar.

Our beekeeper Claus also implements the Demeter / Mellifera guidelines for organic beekeeping. These are characterized by:

Natural honeycombs
The queens mate with drones from local bee colonies, which in the long term leads to the bees adapting to local conditions
The fight against the varroa mites is fought only with natural acids, and not chemistry
Reproduction by natural swarming (the bee colonies are initially largely free of varroa)
Low honey production: the bees keep a large part of their own honey to see them through the winter. In bad years, no honey is extracted

Every small step to a more sustainable future counts! Let’s work together to ensure that the delicate balance of our ecosystem is preserved for future generations and that the Earth remains a planet worth living on.

Many thanks to all our colleagues who have contributed to the success of the settlement of the swarms thanks to the excellent ownership culture! Thanks also to SRE who made all of this possible. Thanks to the support of Martin Reichlmeier and his team and the willingness of the site manager Sven Engelhardt to engage in new “experiments” in Perlach, the awareness of biodiversity at the site has already been increased enormously.We hope in future to be able to offer additional breeding opportunities for wild bees, bumblebees and other insects.

We will keep you in the loop.

Your Team of Sustainability@IT & SRE

Contact
Rainer Karcher
Birgit Fridrich