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Schools in a Buzz
WORDS & IMAGES Sue Kingham

Hayley Guglietta and Lesley Davidson-Hurst boast contagious enthusiasm for bees, leaving those they touch buzzing with inspiration to care for our precious pollinators.


Buzzing around Christchurch on any given school day, Hayley Guglietta and Lesley Davidson-Hurst can be found teaching sustainability to students from Years 4 to 8 as part of the He Pī Mīharo Bee Awesome programme. ‘Following the Canterbury earthquakes,’ says Hayley, ‘I decided to focus my energy on helping sustainability projects, so I joined several Ōtautahi Christchurch community organisations, and also studied to become a qualified beekeeper.’ In 2019 she established Bee Awesome as a social enterprise.


Hayley put bees at the heart of the programme, selling products such as honey and wax candles to help sustain the enterprise. As an additional revenue earner, she also offers a swarm collection service. 


During swarm season, which here can begin as early as August and runs until the end of January, bees swarm if they have outgrown their hives or need to find areas with more food. Although thousands of bees arriving in a garden is a shock for most people, these swarms are rarely aggressive. To capture bees, Hayley, dressed in her beekeeper suit, places a portable hive nearby and adds a spray of pheromone to entice the bees inside. ‘Our bee nursery is in Richmond,’ Hayley says. ‘I take the swarms there and carefully monitor them to check if the queen is viable and the bees are free from infection. The parasitic Varroa mite is a particular worry, as a heavy infestation will cripple a hive. If the bees are healthy, we transfer them to a school hive in our education programme.’


A group of people in bee suits are holding a honeycomb.

Lesley Davidson-Hurst is the qualified teacher for the educational programmes and brims with ideas to engage students. ‘In one lesson, I blow up balloons, and the children rub them on their heads,’ she says. ‘Then they hold them above confetti, and the paper flies onto the balloons due to static electricity. It’s a great visual example of how pollen is captured on bees’ legs.’ 


On the day I meet Lesley she is at Villa Maria College. ‘Every school does our programme differently,’ she explains. ‘Here, I work with the TeenAg group once a fortnight during their lunch period.’ 


Wearing hairnets, the excited students listen as Lesley explains how to remove honey from a wax honeycomb using a separator, which, to my untrained eye, looks like a tea urn. Inside there’s a slot to keep the honeycomb secure as it spins. After 10 minutes of agitation, all the honey has left the comb. The girls beam with pride when presented with their jar of honey. 


I walk with Lesley to inspect the school’s hive in a small orchard. Her face twists in concern at the sight of numerous fallen apples. ‘This isn’t good,’ she says. ‘Rotting fruit attracts wasps, which pose a major threat because they enter a hive, eat any eggs and larvae, then kill bees and steal the honey. I’ll ask the girls to pick up and dispose of this fruit. Up to 20 per cent of hives fail, so we must protect them.’


Set up to help future generations understand the importance of preserving bees and insects, Bee Awesome is achieving exactly that.


For more information, visit beeawesome.co.nz.


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