YABeeP Schools Project

Introduced by Ali at the April 2010 YABeeP meeting, this project has been arranged to introduce Yatton Infant School to bees, to dispel the fear of bees and other insects that young children can have and allow them to learn that they are beneficial and friendly creatures - catch them while they are young.

This will happen late April/early May, hopefully early enough for the bee boxes to be immediately populated, and will see YABeeP volunteers go into the school with pre-made flat pack solitary bee boxes which the 8 infant classes will each assemble, decorate and fill with drilled blocks and bamboo to attract solitary bees. They will then use the information they have been given to choose the locations to site their boxes around the school and use an identity chart and recording sheet to 'compete' on occupation an identification of bees. This fits with the current curriculum and agenda of getting the kids outside and interested in the environment.

Both John and Roy have kindly volunteered (methinks Press Ganged more like!) to respectively drill blocks and pre-cut pallets for the flat-packs, Ali is working on the ID chart and record sheet but she is still looking for volunteers to go in on the day to assist the teacher to supervise the assembly and siting of the boxes and answer any eager questions about bees. Ali will circulate the date by email once agreed so volunteers can commit.

It was also agreed that the volunteers would meet up before the day to run through a construction dress rehearsal to ensure all goes smoothly on the day. In return volunteers would leave with their own test bee box they made at the rehearsal.

We shall be using our own box design which has been drawn up to make optimum use of the large supply of pallets we recently obtained, thus making the cost virtually nil. If you wish to have a go yourself you can download the cutting template which gives dimensions and also download the assembly instructions (2 page PDF).

Whilst this has been arranged with Yatton Infant School Ali did suggest that if anyone wishes to make the necessary arrangements with other local schools we will happily replicate this elsewhere.