Kauai North Shore students buzz over bees

A casual observer would be hard pressed to decide who was creating more of a buzz during last month’s field trips to the Mighty Seed Learning Center at Retro Farms, the bees or the eager young environmentalists. Equipped with kid-sized shovels and giant sized enthusiasm, students from three North Shore schools planted native plants that are attractive to the island’s primary pollinators, bees, butterflies, moths, bats and birds.

Students from Kanuikapono Charter School, Kauai Christian Academy and Kilauea Elementary School engaged in the fall program, aptly named “Pollinators in Paradise,” offered by the Mighty Seed Learning Center, the environmental education component of the nonprofit organization, Retro Farms. The course of study focused on the importance of pollinators and the need to protect them by maintaining open spaces for habitats, planting flora that is rich in pollen and nectar while limiting use of pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals known to be harmful to the birds and the bees. Knowledge assessment at the beginning of the course revealed that the students were generally unaware that roughly 80 percent of the foods they enjoy require pollination. After learning about the various pollinators and the parts of the plants involved in pollination, the students gain a respect for the creatures for which they had little regard and appreciate that a world without pollinators would be much less colorful and not nearly as delicious. 

Many of the students start out thinking our bees are just pesky insects that sting, but by the end of the course acquire a respect and understanding that the mighty bee is an important and necessary component of the world as we know it.

Retro Farms is available for site visits to all interested schools and youth group directors for the summer and fall 2014 programs. Summer programs will begin June 20. Info: retrofarms@gmail.com