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Queen bee!

By Alison Wakeman

Having a background in education as well as a passion for our beloved honey bee, I decided in January 2015 to sit down and write an educational programme to teach primary school children about bees and why they are so important.

My programme, entitled 'Awareness of Bees and their Importance in the Environment' is delivered by myself under my business name of Alison's Bee Class.

Initially I approached my local primary school in order to 'pilot' the programme, voluntarily, in order to check I'd created a viable 'product' as well as pitched at the right level. The school were so impressed with the impact I had, they rewarded my work by purchasing an observation hive for use in educational situations as well as booking me to teach the entire school, on a paid basis. Soon word was spread amongst other Headteachers and I started to take bookings from new schools.

The programme is based on three half-day sessions, which total around 7 hours contact time. It is certainly not a course on teaching children how to 'keep' bees, but addresses so many national curriculum-based areas including life-cycles, habitats, pollination etc.

If a school has a particular topic during the term, I tailor the programme to include bees/bee-keeping such as Victorians, Egyptians, Rainforest. This is great fun for me also, as it often requires me to carry out new research myself!

When I arrive at the classroom for the first time, I enter wearing my full pink bee suit, holding my smoker.  I do a little 'panto' act, which wins over the children's interest from the start.  When asking the children what I do for a 'living', I'm apparently a Teletubby or an astronought at times!

The first session starts with the basics, so discuss 'what is a bee', identification and anatomy also why bees sting.  Children are fascinated with the stinger and draw some amazing pictures.  If my bee's had stings the size they draw, I'd win an Olympic gold medal running from the apiary!  We also look at the make-up of a full-size bee hive, which I take along and 'hide' the various parts around the room in order to build on the table, discussing each part in turn.

The first part of session two, continues focusing on the actual bee as we look at the life-cycle and roles within the colony.  Again, this ticks many boxes for the schools as I follow many curriculum areas.   Depending on the year group, I choose different activities.  For the younger ages (Years 1 and 2) we do role-play for both life-cycles and roles. 

To watch 30-plus children pretending to be a queen bee laying an egg, through to hatching out, as well as acting as guard bees, nurse bees, scout bees etc never fails to have me and the teachers in tears from laughter.  As well as their innocence during questioning.

My favourite has to be when explaining how hygienic bees can be within the hive and the role of the under-taker bee.  I ask “If there was a dead body in the corner of this classroom, what should we do?”  One 7-year old child answered 'Hide it and deny everything'!

The second half of the second session moves away from the actual bee and turns towards why they're so important.  Hence we start to look at pollination.  Depending on the age group, they either draw the correct reproductive parts of a flower and label or they assemble some felt parts which achieves the same result.  The advantage to the felt flowers, which include coloured pompoms for pollen, I am able to 'fly' my finger bee puppet around each flower, collecting and dropping different colours of pollen to different flowers, demonstrating the transfer of pollen to aid pollination.

The third and final session continues with pollination and looks at what items of raw food ingredients we would loose without bees.  I take in empty food packaging as well as plastic fruit (started with real fruit/veg, but it's amazing how unappetising it can look after being mauled by so many little hands.  Some children have obviously never seen a carrot before!)   I get them to research the raw item (say a pear) from a list I am continually adding to, which states whether it requires a bee to pollinate it or not.  We then discuss the findings after the activity and the children are often shocked with the result. 

Being a keen hobby crafter, many of my 'props' are home-made.  Including 'Abeegail Stingbottom' who was upcycled from old chefs clothing and is pop-studded together so the children are able to assemble her from her various body parts!  I even have my own 'ABC' logo, which I ran a competition for a Year 6 class to design for me!

My sessions are broken down into sections of me delivering with many hands-on activities.  Again, depending on the age group the ratio of delivery/activities varies considerably. Activities range from drawing bees, assembling bee body parts, problem solving, model making as well as group debate discussing local vs global for the older age range.

The final activity is usually entitled 'From Egg to Apple' and they chose between whether they wish to do this as written work or pictorial showing eight stages of how we get from a queen bee laying an egg through to having an apple to eat. 

Our local MP walking into a session last term right at the moment we were drawing the reproductive parts of a flower. She was amazed that I was not only covering this with 7-year olds but the fact they understood the process of pollination at such a young age, due to the way I explain it.

I do get very passionate and animated in my delivery as I feel it's so important children learn about this subject matter and engage in it as it's their future world, not mine and their turn to look after it!

Since walking into the classroom for the first time over 2 years ago, I have been to 15 different primary schools (some the entire school, some just two/three classes, but get repeat work) within the local authorities of both Telford & Wrekin as well as Shropshire Council, and have educated over 2,500 children.  I have also talked at other sessions both to children and adults.

In 2015 I had the honour of personally meeting the Duchess of Cornwall with my observation hive.  My opening comment was 'Good afternoon Duchess, please may I introduce my Queen?!'

I truly love and believe in what I do and can't think of anything better, being paid to talk about your hobby!  I also give 'talks' to adult groups too, which are fact-filled & entertaining!

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http://www.terry-jones.co.uk

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