Story appeared in the 2021 issue of QMS Connections Magazine.

BY HAYLEY PICARD, Director of Communications & Marketing

“It’s all about a commitment to celebrating pollinators and educating our community.”

Bees have long been revered by cultures and civilizations around the world. In Ancient Egypt, the modest honey bee attained deep religious and spiritual significance due to its ability to fertilize crops and produce honey. Myths and legends connected to bees abound in Greek and Indian lore, Mycenaean tombs mimic the shape of bee hives, and cave paintings of Mesolithic people gathering honey exist in Spain. For humans, these busy insects have always been essential to our food supply, and in nature, they help to maintain biodiversity.

Indigenous cultures such as the Yiaku who live in the Mukogodo forest in central Kenya have been keeping bees since ancient times to use the honey for food and traditional rituals and medicine.

Their beekeeping methods are used as a strong forest management system, helping the Yiaku defend the forest against intruders and monitor its ongoing health. Their efforts have assisted in expanding the Mukogodo forest cover from 52 percent to 70 percent percent in the last decade. This is a strong example of how pollinators can enhance an ecosystem in a myriad of ways, and as our global bee populations are seriously threatened by the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), it’s important that we inspire our communities to help them.

Fast forward to May 28, 2021 when QMS students from Preschool through Grade 12 eagerly watched a local beekeeper work to gather and re-locate a healthy bee swarm from the roof of The Learning Centre. So how did QMS become such a bee friendly school?

“During a Pro-D event at Mulgrave School in 2019, I was introduced to their bee hive program,” begins Alison O’Marra-Armstrong, Director of Academics. “I was taken by it being so interactive, providing many learning opportunities—from life cycle studies to environmental stewardship and so on.” Alison researched the costs and proposed that a QMS bee hive program be purchased for the entire community to benefit from, and the QMS Parents’ Association stepped up to fund the project. Yet, it would still be some time before she would see the sweet results of her labour.

“Establishing a bee hive is a pretty specific process,” laughs Alison wryly. “After reaching out to Beewatch (a Vancouver-based ethical bee hive company) and working with Magali Chemali, we became more aware of the path ahead of us. They have a mandate to install hives where the bees can be healthy and will have the maximum learning potential for students. Bee hives also need to be on a second storey with southern exposure because they produce baby bees in the summer and need to maintain a 35oC hive temperature to succeed with the incubation.” A challenge to the School, but the timing could not have been more perfect.

With the construction of Phase II of The Learning Centre underway, modifications to the architectural plans were fairly simple. Maintenance Manager, Bruce McPherson, met with Shawn Wallace from Knappett Construction to discuss the potential for a colony at QMS and drafted plans for tubing, glass, and considered ways he could further enrich the campus environment with bee friendly flora for our impending permanent residents. Following an environmental campus audit by Beewatch to ensure continual food sources for the bees, and many more meetings, the wheels were set in motion to begin work towards the impending arrival of a QMS queen bee and her 20,000-member entourage in 2021.

Caring for and maintaining a bee hive takes time, people, and love. It was going to take a big team and unwavering community support for the bees to take flight at QMS. Once again, the timing was perfect.

In 2020, the Senior School Eco Club began discussions around the importance of bees to our local environment. When this group combined with the Global Issues Club later the same year, the energy was immediate, and action to help protect these little hairy-eyed friends was imminent.

Three Senior students, Katia Bannister (Grade 12), Maia Cassie (Grade 9) and Nyomi Godard (Grade 9), combined efforts and their work to have QMS receive its official Bee School Designation (which they achieved in June) spilled into their discussions with the City of Duncan’s Youth Council. Their presentations and suggestions inspired political leaders to pursue becoming a Bee Designated City, the first on Vancouver Island and third in BC. “It’s all about a commitment to celebrating pollinators and educating our community about issues around the pollinators’ well-being and habitat destruction,” outlines Katia.

Maia nods as she reflects on their efforts over the last year. “The bee hive coming into the TLC was a happy coincidence,” she laughs. “It lined up very nicely with our plans.” The trio further strategized the planting of bee gardens and encouraged the planting of native flowering trees around campus. “There were a lot of aspects about QMS’s [environmental efforts] that I didn’t know about before we started doing this, such as being a pesticide-free campus. We had a great base to start from.”

“One of the other requirements to become a bee certified school is that we had to expand pollinator habitat on campus and commit long term. So, these students went to Bruce, outlined their plans, and he agreed to help,” smiles Nicole Lorusso, STEM Department Head. Bruce purchased the list of suggested plants they provided and all three students, along with Nicole, worked to position the trees and plants in a manner most advantageous for the bees, and which would be esthetically pleasing to humans.

A partnership with the Cowichan Green Community’s Resiliency Project further advanced their efforts to expand bee habitat at QMS. “In the fall of 2020, they provided us with seeds and dirt, so we created a nursery and are growing the seedlings in our green house. Half of the grown seedlings will go back to them and we retain 50% for own garden which will be situated near the Senior School,” shares Lorusso.

For graduating student, Katia, the experience has been a powerful one. “In the Cowichan Valley, there is already so much infrastructure that supports pollinators and we have community around that. It would be awesome if there were more opportunities to include young people, in particular, in learning and in creating habitat for bees. The restoration work that I have been taking part in for the last three years has been meaningful to me. It hasn’t just been about meadow making for pollinators. It’s been working along the Cowichan River, in estuaries, and in riparian zones strengthening local ecosystems that cradle the community that we live in and the other species that we share these spaces with. I know how influential that has been in my life, so even in the sense of creating habitat for bees and learning about the native species that they rely on; where to plant, why to plant. I think those are fantastic ways for youth to get involved.”

Katia’s local partnerships provided field trip opportunities for her classmates in Physical Geography 12 to receive hands-on experience helping local biologists in riparian habitat restoration, and Nicole furthered her students’ knowledge in Life Sciences 11 this spring by completing an investigation for evidence of local solitary ground nesting bees. An ecologically important keystone species that QMS students assisted by roping off their nest sites to protect them.

The trio’s work has been credited with enhancing the new QMS Bee Keeping Team which includes members from both the Junior and Senior Schools. These students maintain the nectar levels, lead bee educational opportunities for classes, and provide important data on the health of the hive back to Magali at Beewatch.

“It’s been really exciting to see how the Junior School students have engaged with the presentations that Nyomi and I have been doing this year,” says an excited Maia.

“The amount of knowledge our young students already have about bees, and knowing that our School is educating them about their importance was really nice!” exclaims Nyomi. “In the future I would like to be involved even more with the youth projects.”

These bee advocates have also completed beautiful murals on the green house in the Senior School garden and led a public webinar in June entitled, The Buzz About Bees.

Alison O’Marra-Armstrong sees the School’s bees through the lens of limitless learning potential for our students. “Bee democracy, agricultural and food sustainability, disease prevention, literary studies and social justice are all connected,” she says enthusiastically. “We’re just getting started!”

HOW TO MAKE YOUR GARDEN POLLINATOR FRIENDLY
By Nyomi Godard & Maia Cassie

Attractive native pollinator plants you can grow in your garden to attract bees:

• Woolly sunflower
• Snowberry
• Red columbine
• Red flowering currant
• Nootka rose
• Tall Oregon grape

GREAT BEE TIPS
By Nyomi Godard & Maia Cassie

• Do your research and choose to plant native plants that are well-suited to your garden microclimate.

• Choose to plant brightly colored flowers that will appeal to a variety of pollinators – both bee and non-bee alike

• Choose plants that bloom at a variety of times throughout the year to guarantee a food source for pollinators in your garden year-round. Also try to plant species that bloom early to provide food for newly emerging queen bees at the beginning of the year when there are few blooms.

• Choose to plant species that have many florets and plant patches of them. This “style” of planting is best suited for the way that bees feed and pollinate and mimics the way that natural landscapes propagate.

A Pollinator's Dream

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