The Busy Bees Nursery Group has won a healthy eating award at a National Seafood awards ceremony.

Busy Bees won the ‘Encouraging Children to Eat Seafood’ category at the National Seafood Awards, hosted by Seafish, an authority on seafood, at the Seafood Awards Ceremony 2009 in London on 22 May. Busy Bees was up against some strong competition, including Manchester City Council and Billingsgate Seafood Training School.

Busy Bees Nurseries won the award following a seafood project held last year which involved nursery visits from seafood chef and child nutritionist Ady Delaney, who was a runner-up in the competition two years ago. He visited many of the group’s day nurseries, where he introduced the children to the topic of fish by cooking a variety of fish and helping them to make sushi as well as develop role play areas themed around fish.

Mr Delaney said he was delighted that Busy Bees won as “there were 27 entries in the ‘Encouraging Children to Eat Seafood’ category alone”. But nerves got the better of him when the evening’s host, Welsh comedian and TV personality Rhod Gilbert, announced that Busy Bees had won. “I didn’t go up to receive the award because I had got into such a state thinking about it that I got stage fright,’ he confessed. “When we won the award I was in shock. It all happened so fast.” Busy Bees Operations Director Marg Randles said, “We are very proud to have won this award, especially considering the fierce competition we faced. All the nurseries have worked very hard over the last year to implement the seafood project, so it was great to see all their hard work recognised.”

The Seafood Awards are a Seafish initiative designed to encourage enterprise, innovation and best practice across all areas of the seafood industry. Other category winners included the supermarket groups Asda, Marks & Spencer and Waitrose.