BeesMax in Schools, Colleges ad Universities
This spring in 2023 BeesMAX will be relocating the TreeBeeRescue colonies to our schools for the Apiary Data Collection & Storage (ADC&S) project.
The extra commercial impetus facilitated by RAISE expanded the BeesMAX and Kingston University relationship because business managers at the university there saw the developmental potential for their students. This expanding relationship initiated the development of our Apiary Data Collection & Storage (ADC&S) project.
During the RAISE initiative BeesMAX had the idea to reawaken an old concept that had failed earlier attempts via the national STEM organisation. A toolkit for teaching the national curriculum using bees as a means to success. The costs had to be minimal and the results had to be sufficiently transformative to excite an already heavily burdened teaching profession. The new TreeBeeRescue colonies have seeded those ideas into a really new direction on education and environmental sustainability in schools.
BeesMAX has looked at beekeeping delivery in schools as another community based opportunity but we suffered various roadblocks and current beekeeping methods in schools didn’t really teach the students what they were there for which was to learn the core curriculum subjects; science, engineering, maths, innovation and problem solving.
Within the commercial beekeeping market there were lots of off-the-shelf products which Mark Gale of BeesMAX thought, what if there were an equivalent “Meccano” self-build product that could teach the innovation and problem solving for years 10 to 13 year old students that they need to succeed in life? So, BeesMAX became a STEM Ambassador and so started developing and piloting a product with Greycourt school, local the borough of Kingston and Richmond. That has since blossomed and morphed into our full application this autumn for an NCIL Grant