What is Bees@Schools?
Bees@Schools is a program based out of the University of Guelph that provides school classrooms with hands on scientific experience while collecting valuable data. Each participating school receives a wild bee nest box in the spring that is installed throughout the summer. In the fall, nest boxes are sent back to the University of Guelph’s Centre for Biodiversity Genomics. Here, the contents of the nest boxes will be analyzed using DNA barcoding to investigate the distribution of wild bees in Canada and the food they eat.
This map shows our participating schools from 2023 in orange, 2022 in yellow, 2021 in dark green, 2020 in light green, and 2019 in blue! We had 125 nests returned to us in 2022, 174 nests returned in 2021, 93 returned in 2020, and during our 2019 pilot year, we had 42 successfully installed nest boxes.
We would like to respectfully acknowledge the traditional territories of Indigenous Peoples in Canada, their right to self-determination and sovereignty and their relationships to all aspects of creation since time immemorial. We acknowledge the diversity of Indigenous Nations, territories, and communities and each of their unique relationships to land. Through our collective work, we acknowledge with great respect and give voice to all life on planet earth and honour the sacred relationships between people, nature, and biodiversity.
We are committed to honouring and upholding the 46 articles of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. We will engage with a variety of Indigenous knowledge holders to ensure a diversity of perspectives.
These kinds of relationships require careful cultivation and recognition that they will evolve over time. We re-affirm our commitment to learn to be humble and to continue this journey in a good way.