Bees, these creatures of the sun, help many of our food crops to multiply, and at the same time show us the state of our souls: “The entire beehive is actually permeated with love life” observed Rudolf Steiner. Bees are an image of the spiritual power that lends dignity to freedom: for the power of love that wants to become effective.
At Chrysalis, we are have successfully acquired a Junior Landcare grant to support and implement the 100 Hives in 100 Schools project in our school. This project aims to raise the profile of Native Bees for future generations and highlight their value in terms of strategies for diversifying beekeeping in the agricultural and food industry, as well as increasing the numbers of Native Bees across the Mid North Coast as a whole. A Native Stingless Beehive will be placed in our education environment and the project will provide interactional educational resources in supporting and enhancing our knowledge for bees, ecosystems and biodiversity.
Students will be involved in selecting the Native Bee Habitat site, interacting with the installation of the hive and ongoing engagement through online educational resources. They will use questioning, mathematics and predicting to look at the behaviour of Native Bees in relation to the weather and seasons – this includes recording data around the natural environment of the school and how the bees interact in this environment, as well as hive data on quantities of bees, colours of pollen related to what is in flower and hive weight. They will use the digital platform and resources to research and investigate for school projects with native bees = i.e. making bee hotels, beehives, habitats, life cycles, traits, brood development, hive products, splitting hives, as well as create drawings and reflections through art, poetry, song, drama and dance.
This term Sid and John took delivery of our new Native Stingless Beehive courtesy of Steve from Little Star Bee Sanctuary. Please see below for photos of the children being introduced to the hive by Steve.
