Parkmore Primary Visit

In August 2024, four of our Year 9 students visited Parkmore Primary School where they supported the primary students to develop a bee friendly garden. Parkmore have developed Future Problem-Solving Teams who are raising awareness and teaching other schools how to reduce plastic waste, improve our environment, and save the bees! One of their teams is called Team BEAP who requested support to do some heavy lifting. Tristan Beaugeard, Gus Dinnage, Jack Knight and Junior Sukaliana assisted in this project by placing the tubs where the gardens would be grown, and moving the mulch for ground covering. 

Last week, we were invited back for the opening ceremony of the Bee Garden, where members of council, Rotary Club branches and Bunnings representatives were in attendance. This group of boys represented our school with great leadership, and showed keen interest in conversations with the primary students, community members and school staff.

In October 2024, Team BEAP qualified for the 2024 Australian National Championships. Their success in the Nationals have now qualified Team BEAP for the 2025 World Championships to be held at the University in Bloomington in Indianapolis, USA.

Parkmore Primary are currently fundraising to get this team to the US, as the first Australian State School to qualify for this Championship! We will continue to support this project by holding a BBQ on Friday 28 March where all funds raised will be donated from Wantirna College! If you would like to support this, please see the below QR code for how you can donate.

A little more info about the project from Parkmore Primary:

Bee Education and Protection (Team BEAP) is a team of five students from Parkmore Primary School in Victoria, Australia. With support from Parkmore Staff and our wonderful community, Team BEAP have developed a problem-solving project to help educate our wider community about the importance of native bees.

With the help of Bunnings, White Horse City Council, friends and families, Team BEAP have designed a Bee Safe native garden and are installing a beeeeautiful native bee garden.

More recently, the team have partnered with Monash University to study the Native bees visiting the garden, including the Blue Banded Bee and Stingless Bee.

Team BEAP's project began in January 2024 and, since then, we have developed, designed, implemented and presented, a number of initiatives and actions including (but not limited to):

-Presenting our work and gaining support from the State Environmental Minister 

- We communicate and are supported by members at Beechworth Honey

- We are supported by Bunnings and Monash - our Local City Council.

Late last year, Team BEAP developed a community competition to design and develop a Bee Hotels for our Bee Garden. We continue to education and inform our community of the type of plants and water sources which encourage native bees and their habitat.

Courtney Moran

Connect Crew