Education

The Wild Pollinator Count gives you an opportunity to contribute to wild pollinator insect conservation in Australia. We invite you to count wild pollinators in your local environment and help us build a database on wild pollinator activity. You can join in by watching any flowering plant for just ten minutes sometime in our count week. Find out how to count pollinators, identify the insects you see and submit your observations through the links at the top of the page. You can also download our Run Your Own Count kit and organise to count with a group.

The Australian Curriculum aligned “Love Food? Love Bees!” integrated units explore the importance of bees and enables students to take real and bee-friendly action in their community. Online educational material and support to bring sustainability and our environment into Australian classrooms, providing teachers with engaging, fun and informative learning activities on a whole range of topics. Worth exploring.

is an excellent resource for the Rudolf Steiner curriculum (Waldorf Schools) as it integrates ‘bees’ into main lessons throughout the curriculum with a good range of ideas, poetry, songs and stories to use.

Sezza Jai Sykes has created a broad range of activities focussed on language, maths, spatial, body/ kinaesthetic, music / auditory, inter and intra personal and spiritual connections to deepen our connection and appreciation with bees. Have a look at this wonderful resource.

Explore and document wildlife from around the world. Document nature with your mobile phone. Help scientists with ongoing research. Fascinating interactive site to get us out in the field.

Dynamic Association that connects through Education to advance environmental and sustainability issues across all communities and education sectors. Latest issue of Conversations has an article about fun ways to bring bees into the curriculum through the arts.

A monthly newsletter from National Parks and Wildlife Foundation with all sorts of news on what’s happening seasonally with all sorts of animals. March B-mail 2016 has ‘It’s a Solitary Life for a Bee’ and also wasp stories. Worth subscribing to.

Colourful and informative guide to pollination, bees, flowers and bee shelters, particularly northern NSW with an excellent guide to building Bee Hotels.

Honeybees have thrived for 50 million years, each colony 40 to 50,000 individuals coordinated in amazing harmony. So why, seven years ago, did colonies start dying en masse? Marla Spivak reveals four reasons which are interacting with tragic consequences. This is not simply a problem because bees pollinate a third of the world’s crops. Could this incredible species be holding up a mirror for us?

A beautiful short film about honey bees by Peter Nelson. Original score by John Powell. Narrated by Bill McKibben.

Amazing You Tube clip

A profound, alternative look at the global Bee Crisis from award winning film maker Taggart Siegel.

HIVES is about short film about a Vancouver-based community worker, Sarah Common, who uses beekeeping to reconnect people to their communities, the land, and themselves. As a sideways glance at the Downtown Eastside, a community that has historically been represented in a negative light for their centralisation of drug use and poverty, Sarah Common’s story shows something different: Moments of beauty, hope and positivity.

Brilliant short clip by Greenpeace on bees and pesticides. Save the bees, save the humans.

Follows commercial beekeepers David Hackenberg and Dave Mendes as they strive to keep their bees healthy and fulfill pollination contracts across the U.S. The film explores the struggles they face as the two friends plead their case on Capital Hill and travel across the Pacific Ocean in the quest to protect their honeybees. Filming across the US, in Europe, Australia and Asia, this documentary examines the alarming disappearance of honeybees and the greater meaning it holds about the relationship between mankind and mother earth. As scientists puzzle over the cause, organic beekeepers indicate alternative reasons for this tragic loss.

Growing a Wind Garden-Arts Project. The Common Ground exhibition features a variety of projects that present how students in schools across British Columbia explored their local landscape and its relationship with the people, animals and plants who live there.

Depicts the respectful and deep relationship between the beekeeper and the bees in Translyvania where agriculture has been least affected by pesticides. Beautifully filmed with important message about the importance of the bees for the planet and the urgency of their need.

We’ve just received an email from Ella, a student doing research on bees and she recommended this site and wanted us to share it. It has a good overview of their origin, the tasks in the hive and pollination. Thanks Ella for sharing.

Interest in sustainable beekeeping is at an all-time high. For anyone eager to learn more about this increasingly popular activity, Song of Increase is a book with the potential to change not just the way you look at honeybees, but your entire relationship with the natural world. “Bee whisperer” Jacqueline Freeman, whose bee and farm YouTube videos have been watched more than a million times, shares spiritual wisdom and practical insights for engaging in a mutually beneficial relationship with these surprising creatures.

Wonderful educational resources for teachers. Have a good look as there’s a feast of ideas, music, stories, activities.

A new story of a much loved bear who is ‘saving the bees’. It also has lots of activities from planting to baking to arts and crafts to educate children about the importance of bees. (Scroll down the page to download the book).

Follow the life of the bumblebee queen through the year as she creates colonies of hundreds of bees in the space of her life of only one year.

A beautifully illustrated story for children about a Scout the bee in search of the last flowers in Autumn.

Drama, games and art projects to do with young children with a focus on bees.

A close up views of the queen, the cells and bee eggs of a wild hive which is enthralling for all ages. Have a peek at the trailer.

Based on an African folktale, the joyful hunt of a young boy and animals following the honeyguide to the honeycomb.

Bea (Beatrice) and the inhabitants of the meadow fought off some developers who wanted to build houses all over it. Find out how!

Silent Spring is a follow up to Busy Bee and the Endangered Meadow.

An excellent introduction to natural science with beautiful illustrations and insights into the complexity of the bees world.

Beautiful poetic text which is easy to read with bold illustrations of bees.

Fascinating book on How do bees communicate? What does a beekeeper do? Did you know that Napoleon loved bees? Who survived being stung by 2,443 bees? This book answers all these questions and many more, tracking the history of bees from the time of the dinosaurs to their current plight.

Brings alive the thousands of bees visiting millions of flowers to gather the nectar to make honey. The complexity of each task in the hive is discussed as well as understanding the rhythms of beekeepers year.

A witty and lively insight into the life cycle, work and history of bees for years 3-5

The bees on the Bell estate are dying. There’ll be no more delicious honey, and without the bees to pollinate flowers, no more fruit and vegetables. No more of Mrs Simpson’s glorious pies and cakes! Worse still, Mr Fisher the gardener will have to leave the estate, along with his family. Darius Bell is determined that something must be done, even if the dastardly Mayor is against him.

An adventure story of ‘Ned Kelly’ who spent an unusual summer in a beehive after shrinking to the size of a bee. A great read for 8 – 80 year olds with a factual base to the fantasy.

Simple, clear poster of planting calendar for bee friendly plants which could be easily adapted to Australia by exchanging the months on the chart eg March with September etc. FOE UK has a range of resources on ‘saving the bees’