The BeeHolder, July 2009

I hope that most of you went to see our very successful exhibition in the Newtown library during April. We managed to borrow the WBKA  display stand and a quantity of top class photos plus the really excellent ones taken by Jessica and David Bennett. Jim Crundwell provided some really interesting old posters and equipment including a straw skep, and the Co-Op provided us with a quantity of packets of wild flower seeds which we gave away to children who visited the display.

The highlight of the show, however, was the two days of demonstrations of bee-craft to classes from local Primary Schools. Visits to the library had been arranged by Caroline Davies of the CAFE project (Children, Agriculture, Food & Education). Caroline helped us to overcome the hurdles of risk assessment and smoothed the path with those who can authorise these things. After all, we were talking not only about getting live bees into a public place, but also over 200 primary school pupils from the five schools in and around the town centre (Penygloddfa Junior, St Mary’s RC Primary, Hafren Junior, Ladywell Green Infants and Ysgol Dafydd Llwyd)

At the end of the two days the children had dressed up in beesuits, examined hive equipment, tasted several types of honey and experienced seeing (and in some cases touching...shh) live bees. Of course we were also “educating” the teachers. We had taken along the Bee educational resources binder and Caroline invited the teachers to look through it and sent them photocopies of all the sections they had highlighted the following week. Our three MBKA demonstrators, Jessica, Tony Shaw and Graham Winchester, were thoroughly exhausted but pleased that other schools had asked for the team to visit with their “performance” and, of course, their bees.

Arrangements for the exhibition were harder than we had imagined. We found it difficult to work out whether our insurance covered taking live bees outside our own apiaries and we found the legislation about “Risk Assessment” sheets very hard to understand. In the end everything turned out well. We were somewhat pleased when a few weeks later we got a phone call from Peter Guthrie, the Seasonal Bee Inspector asking if we would send the Risk Assessment Sheet to Brecon & Rad BKA so that they could use it for a similar library exhibition that they were holding.

One teacher asked us to judge the Bee project she had given her class. The efforts were of exceptional high standard; far better than I think I could have done at 8 years old. We decided to give a prize of an apiary visit to the best three. Again officialdom and bureaucracy had to be considered: one cannot just invite a child to see bees. Each parent gave written permission, and each child was accompanied by a parent or grandparent. We were lucky to have our Eifrion Thomas come with 3 children’s beesuits. As headmaster of Aberhafesp Primary School he had the easy confidence and authority of supervising the dressing of the children and putting them at ease. The rain relented for a couple of hours during which Graham Winchester showed the children his bee equipment and then opened his hives and encouraged the children to hold some frames. Each child was presented with a MBKA certificate saying they had handled live bees, and, as we guessed, they proudly showed these to their class-mates the next day. We had already asked each parent whether we could use pictures for publicity in the local paper or our magazine. Each had agreed. We then made a point of asking each child whether we could use their picture. After each had agreed we laboriously asked each parent whether it was indeed OK “ ....obviously it is up to you to make the final decision”. Many simple procedures during the afternoon took seconds to perform yet took ages of planning. The children learnt a lot about bees: we learnt a lot about introducing children to bees. We would like to take this opportunity of thanking the staff of the Newtown Library for allowing us to use the foyer for our Exhibition and especially for their tolerance of all the noise the children inevitably made. We did find a way of reducing the noise: the children were told that the queen would hide if there was too much noise around her. A little boy in one group who were round the Observation hive approached some excited children at the honey-tasting table. “..be quite” he said sternly “we cannot find the queen”.

Maesyrhandir Primary School, Newtown, was one of the Schools that had requested a MBKA visit and Caroline was able to arrange this on 15th June. We came up with a ‘Bee Discovery Day’ with their 217 pupils plus of course, some very interested adults, teachers and teaching assistants, who were learning with the children. It started with a 20 minute presentation to the whole school at the morning assembly. We had to rush through each class through 4 different types of bee- within the tight schedule. Next time though we will not be quite as ambitious in terms of throughput. related activities: the observation hive, the bee suits, the empty hive and spinner and honey tasting – run by Arthur Bennett fresh from his GCSEs!. We could not always do all the activities

Speaking educationally the teachers were interested because we were able to point out how Bees linked in to so many of their National Curriculum topics about homes, food, habitats and the new agenda for ESD (Education for Sustainable Development). We learnt a few more acronyms doing this – education seems to breed them! Clearly there would be interest in doing more – if we have the energy of course.

Caroline Davies (Cafe Project) & Powys Council’s School Farm Visits Officer)
Joe Bidwell (MBKA Education Officer)