Chillingham Public School

Success through teamwork

Telephone02 6679 1255

Emailchillingha-p.school@det.nsw.edu.au

Beeelieve in our Future

This year we have been successful in our application for a Woolworths Garden Grant available through Landcare Australia. 

A significant part of this grant was suporting Australian Native Bees, currently under threat from a range of environmental issues. Living in a rural area, students became aware of the endangered Native Bees during a STEM investigation. Our first steps to create a bee friendly environment, are outlined in the following pages. 

Happy-ever-after Home

Native behive in the school garden.

The bees have settle very happily into their new environment, buzzing around the garden, loving the flowers students planted earlier for them.  

Oddly the students noticed a large number of bees buzzing around the steps to the Art Room over the past week. Their curiosity raised they are asking our expert aparists what might be the attraction. Could they be looking to make a new hive? Can they sense something we can't see? Is it a great place to watch the students at play? All good questions - let's see if we can find an answer!

Students are keen to create other bee hotels in the future making a bee highway in our school with the help of parent aparists. 

Rainforest Audit

Local Landcare volunteers, Judy and Suzy have a well earned rest after weeding the school rainforest.

Judy and Suzy, volunteers in the local Landcare group,  do an awesome job maintaining the school rainforest. They conducted a plant audit, comparing it with the original records from some 20 years ago, ensuring there were no toxic plants for the native bees. 

We thank you for your ongoing hard work and very glad to see you do have a rest too!

Pick a 'forever home' for our bees.

A school map for students to pick a location for our beehive.
Image: Think about where the bees will have warm morning sun and shade in the hot summer days.

Meet our hive.

Pictures of our rescue beehive.
Image: Our hive is a daughter hive from this log. The log had fallen and the hive was in desperate need of rescue.

Before moving the hive Ocean, the aparist, decided to hook up an eduction. This is a gentle way of splitting a hive and these poor girls had completely run out of room in their log.

As you know our hive is currently having a visit with Courtney the Bee Lady at Tweed Heads until we're all back at school. Before then we need to find the best spot for our hive so Mr Prestwich can have the post ready. He's also helping Mrs Harper prepare the garden, ready for new some delicious plants!

The other photos shows how happily our brood is growing and building off the mother hive.  

Our beehive growing happily

Caring for our beehive.
Image: Ocean caring for our beehive while it waits to come to it's forever home in our playground.

Rescuing our precious bees.

Other rescue hives saved to protect our endangered bee populations.
Image: Other rescue hives saved to protect our endangered bee populations. Ocean also rescues European honey bees like the one found in this abandoned house.

Most beehive rescues are from water meters, fallen logs, fire hydrants and a range of other spaces that are not ideal or they are in danger of being damaged or killed.

The removal of these hives is incredibly important to ensure their survival of our native bee populations. Most hives are placed in local areas to increase pollination and help regenerate our local bushlands.

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We would like to pay our respects and acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land and also pay respect to Elders both past and present.

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