WENVOE COMMUNITY HUB
Tel: 02920 594176 – during opening hours or wenvoelibrary@outlook.com
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Report from the Hub
July 2025
JULY 2025 IN OUR COMMUNITY LIBRARY / HUB
NEW OPENING HOURS
We are now open Monday, Tuesday and Wednes-day 10 am – 4 pm and Saturday 9 am – 1 pm.
Winners of Spring Raffle were D Hooper (ticket no. 55) and J Vaughan (ticket no. 27)
New Books
Wild Seed by Octavia E Butler
It begins when two immortals meet in an African forest.
Southern Man by Greg Iles
A music festival turns into a mass shooting in Mississippi,
Final Traitor by Andy McDermott
The mission comes first – you are a desirable asset. Betrayal is punished by death.
Bees and Honey by Steve Merishall and Rachel de Thoniple
A practical guide to caring for bees and using honey.
Summer Reading Challenge 2025
The Hub is launching the Summer Reading Challenge as it has done each summer. The Summer Reading Challenge encourages children to keep reading during the summer holidays, ensuring they are ready for a great start to the new term in the autumn. Children set a reading goal and collect rewards for reading anything they enjoy. Children can sign up at the Wenvoe Hub from 10th July and it’s FREE to take part.
All Primary School and Nursery children are invited to take up the Challenge.
This year’s Challenge is called Story Garden, and it is all about inspiring children to explore the connection between storytelling and nature.
From nature spotting to outdoor activities there is something for everyone. The children will be encouraged to create their own Story Garden from what they see in the natural world around them.
The 2025 Summer Reading Challenge will be launched in the Wenvoe Hub on Thursday 10th July; the day the school has their visit. Each child signs up to read at least 6 books over the summer holiday. They can be anything they enjoy: comic books, picture books, nonfiction and fiction. After every two books read, there is a reward and then by the end of the summer holidays a special certificate and a med-al. There are 3 rewards to collect and then finally the medal if six books have been read.
Last year our children did well. Sixty-eight from Nursery right through to Year 6 in Primary School, signed up and of these, at least fifty read at least two books. Seventeen children completed the challenge
and a further six were Super Readers. These were children who read more than six books. They received a special reward to celebrate their achievement. Let’s hope we can do even better this year. So, let’s get Reading!
Review – Buzzing with Knowledge: A Brilliant Talk Wraps Up the Season of Talks at the Hub
Our latest season of Talks at the Hub ended on a real high, thanks to an utterly fascinating session from Professor Robert Pickard. With wit, warmth, and a deep wealth of knowledge, he captivated our audience with The Wonderful Thing about Bees.
Professor Pickard, Emeritus Professor of Neurobiology at Cardiff University and President of both the Cardiff Beekeepers Association and the UK Central Association of Beekeepers, brought the world of honeybees to life with insights drawn from his own research and that of others.
We discovered that bees have been buzzing around for over 120 million years, evolving alongside flowering plants. Even more surprisingly, they share round 60% of their DNA with humans. It was mind-blowing to learn that MRI scans have even been taken of bee brains to understand how these tiny creatures process information and further medical research.
Among the many nuggets of knowledge that we absorbed:
- Bees can’t see red, but they do see ultraviolet, allowing them to detect dazzling petal patterns invisible to us
- Bees make collective decisions when swarming—scouting, dancing, debating, and reaching a consensus in a process that resembles political caucusing.
- They can even be taught tricks—and, amazingly, some are believed to keep pet flies to clean their mandibles!
Professor Pickard also shed light on lesser known facts: the use of tiny “skirts” for queen bees to pre-vent egg laying to control disease, and their exceptional sense of smell, enabling them to identify flowers by scent alone. We also heard about the famous waggle dance, translated by Nobel Prize winner Karl von Frisch, and how modern researchers have developed bee robots to replicate the dance to communicate with real bees.
It wasn’t just science—it was storytelling at its finest, leaving us all buzzing with new appreciation for our winged friends. Bees, it turns out, aren’t just brilliant pollinators. They’re complex, intelligent, and endlessly fascinating.
Heulwen Davies
