Hive Up-Education Sector

Common questions

  • Do the student visit the bees?

    Absolutely! The best time to visit the bees is in early spring and just before school let's out. Small group of kids and teachers are welcome to join us in the apiary for a very calming experience. All questions are answered and we go to the rhythm of the students and the bees.

  • What is the best hands on activity you offer?

    As soon as school starts we offer a sticky and fun filled harvest activity. Each group of students harvests their own set of panels start to finish. Since this is the school production of honey, all the honey is left onsite and bottled by the students.

  • What if we need learning material?

    Our team comes fully equipped with material, patience, and a ton of answers. Not all students and teachers want hand-on experience, and that is just fine.
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We need Bees

Kids, our future.

The Hive

Our equipment is chosen after several years of experience and trial and error.  You don't need to manage error so we provide you only with the products we love to use.  Your hives come to you built and painted white.  We always bring it before the bees arrive so that the students have a chance to personalize it-what a great activity!

The equipment, once on site, is yours!  Our goal is that your team becomes little beekeepers in the making.  The bees that arrive have been selected to be good natured and productive.  Busy bees are always more fun to watch and learn from.

As the season progresses so does the teams learning.  As we start talking about derivatives, we often talk about honey.  Yes! All the honey is yours to enjoy.

We make sure the bees are strong and healthy before winter comes allowing them to be ready for your second season with us.

Most school have an ongoing beekeeping program with us for years to come.

The Experience

Can we make beekeeping as hand on as possible for the children?  YES WE CAN!

In each contract we can include what we call BEE-a-mentor.  This is an educator who loves bees and is ready to pass on the information learnt to the rest of the school.  Visits of the school apiary can be added, experiences working with derivative can be added, power point learning opportunities can be added and the list goes on!

Each contract is personalized to what the school wants.  This makes the learning so much more interesting and engaging.

Fundraising Benefits

Although there are many educational grants that the school can access to help cover the cost of the hive(s) and the experience(s), we also promote the resale of the honey collected from the school bees to help fund the subsequent years.  A strong a productive hive can offer approximately 20kg of honey.  That's a lot of little jars with custom school stickers to sell at your Christmas markets!

Families love to support their school and what better way to do it than to buy local honey that your child helped extract.

Safety

Safety is always at the forefront of any of our experiences as much for the beekeepers as for the school staff and children.  We start by educating!  Learning the difference between different flying species and what the goals of our honey bees are helps to open the students eyes to when and how to approach the hive.

Each hive, like children has its personality.  Some days are good and some are not.  Our skilled beekeeper will read the hive and its vibe before allowing any experience surrounding or within the hive to unfold.  We are here first to respect our honey bee and the big work she has to do.  We will only integrate into her busy schedule if the opportunity arrises.

Full bee suits are provided to any member working with our beekeepers.  We learn to dance with the bee on her own time and tempo.