The Pollinator Pioneer’s mission is to promote the health of pollinators, critical to food and ecosystems, through conservation, education, and community projects.
Educating is at the heart of what we do.
In celebration of Pollinator Week, we are lucky to have hosted six wonderful students and three teachers from Northbrook Met College Inclusion Unit. The group visited our Brooklands Park teaching Apiary and made the most of our outdoor classroom space.
We carried out a two-hour training course introducing beekeeping and covering the following topics:
• Pollinators, who are they, and why do we need them?
• Why are Pollinators in decline?
• The Pollination Process
• The Honeybee Hive
• Species, Types and Castes
• Queen Bee, Drone and Worker Roles
• Days 1-41 of the Worker Bee: Responsibilities
• The Honeybee Lifecycle: Eggs, Larvae and Pupa
• Equipment
• Inspections: what we do and why
• The Beekeeping Year
• Disease and Predators
In the final hour we suited and booted up, covered off the Apiary H&S rules, and entered the Apiary where we inspected Queen Honeybun and Queen Luna. Both colonies were very well behaved and the students were amazing, considering their first visit to an apiary.
It was lovely reviewing all the topics we had covered within a real-life example. The students spotted both queens, brood and larvae in the brood box, capped and uncapped honey in the supers boxes.
Caroline, one of the teachers from from NorthBrook College, commented: ‘‘What an absolutely fantastic opportunity for our students to experience something so important. Our students thoroughly enjoyed the day which was paced and delivered perfectly for our students. The interactive aspect of the training was so interesting and Lisa and Celine are so enthusiastic about the project which in itself inspired our students. We very much look forward to coming back to see the progress. They even let us paint a beehive which we loved! Thank you so much.’’
Nothing excites us more than a very engaged community group. Hopefully, inspiring the next generation of beekeepers.
