The Sharing Farm and Terra Nova Nature School (TNNS) have just partnered in pioneering Richmond’s first children’s Bee Camp.
The Sharing Farm contributed our bee hives and our master beekeeper Leslie Williams and TNNS brought their experience as educators to create a camp for nine- to 12-year-olds, which was really something special.
When Emily Vera, of TNNS, first pitched me her idea earlier in the year, her enthusiasm and passion for bees made the concept impossible to resist. Luckily, the Community Foundation of Richmond and the Sage Foundation both agreed, and provided us the funding to purchase much-needed equipment to be used at the camp.
This included child-sized bee suits, a solar wax melter, candle-making materials and an observation hive. These excellent resources, combined with our program planning, will support future beekeeping programs for children of all ages.
Registration for Bee Camp filled up in a matter of hours, demonstrating a keen interest. Children learned about many aspects of honeybees, including the differences between workers, drones and queens; how to identify different stages of development (eggs, larvae, pupae); bee senses (how they see, hear and smell); and the processes of swarms and mating. They also worked on bee-related crafts such as making candles out of beeswax (filtered using our new solar wax melter) and painting the hives bright colours so bees can find them more easily.
The unanimous highlight of the camp for the children was going into the hives every day, especially when they had the opportunity to hold a drone and feed him honey.
“It was fantastic to see the children become more comfortable around the bees as time went by,” Williams said. “I don’t wear gloves when I’m bee-keeping and by the end of the week, some of the children chose to take theirs off as well.”
Another highlight of the week was eating the freshly extracted honey. There was honey lemonade, honey popsicles, honey salad dressing, honeycomb and just plain honey.
The children also learned about native pollinators, not just honey bees, and went out spotting pollinators around the farm. They painted bumblebee boxes, which will be placed around the farm to increase bumblebee nesting habitat.
When I spoke to the children on the last day of camp, a large wasp landed quite close to one of the little girls. I asked her if she was scared of wasps and she replied, “A little, but they are good pollinators too!”
Bee camp has done its job.
Sarah Drewery is the executive director of The Sharing Farm.
