The goals of the  “Buzzing About Bees!” project are to create a unique and engaging outdoor learning opportunity for students at Galindo by establishing an apiary of 2 honeybee hives on our campus, along with the equipment and protected area needed. We will establish a student beekeeping club (3rd-5th grade students this year) with adult mentor/teacher (our librarian), provide the students and the assisting adults with protective clothing for accessing the hives and engaging in hive inspections, provide a way to share observations, information and student learning with our school community and connect real-world science and outdoor learning to student engagement with literacy, research skills and the arts.

We plan to start this spring, with acquiring the hive boxes to create 2 honeybee hives at Galindo and the equipment to tend them. We just had a site chosen by the AustinISD committee that included John Swan, President of the Travis County Beekeepers Association, Anne Muller, AISD Outdoor Learning Specialist and personnel from the Sustainability Department and Facilities Management.  Our school principal, Ms. Barreto-Romero is fully supportive of this opportunity and we are prepared for some extensive education of our staff, students, parents and community. Our adult mentor and teacher who will lead the honeybee club (our librarian, a local beekeeper) will be donating the bees. Many parents have already expressed their support and excitement for this learning opportunity for our students. And we have a local community business sponsor, Two Hives Honey, which will donate time and expertise to our beekeeping group.

Our apiary site has been chosen for safety of students and security of the hives. We will construct a 6-foot fence entirely around the area with a locked gate access, by the end of April 2019. We will install acrylic dome viewing windows  or panels in the fence walls so that students and community members can view the bees’ activity from outside the enclosure. Inside, we will have hives constructed and bees placed in the hives sometime in April or May.

All students in grades Kindergarten through 5th grade will have at TEKS-guided lessons this year and next about these amazing organisms, and their importance to our environment and food supply, during library time and school-wide sharing during morning assembly.  Lessons will be supplemented with books and literature related to honeybees and pollinators, and books on these topics will be promoted, read and on display in the library. Students will have the opportunity to create art, writing, research projects and digital products related to their learning. By the start of next school year, we plan to connect a digital display in the hallway near where our parents eat lunch with their kids (the “Grizzly Dining Hall”) to an iPad or laptop that can cast photos and videos to the display for our school community to see our honeybees in action, see student activity with the hives and information that students will create to teach our community about bees and their role in our environment.