The Peterborough Evening Telegraph
Local news from down your way
City South and The Ortons
YOUNGSTERS from a Stanground school were left buzzing after getting up close to some honeybees.
Each year Anglia Co-operative invites schools across the city to view working hives at its Saville Road, Westwood, headquarters.
And the first visitors of 2012 were a party of 29 year three pupils from Oakdale Primary School in Stanground, who celebrated by creating a special giant flower which will be seen by over 300 children in the coming weeks.
The Oakdale youngsters created the six-foot high flower to mark the fact that they were the first pupils to visit the hives in 2012.
Class teacher Miss Emma Cham said: “The children really enjoyed making it from all sorts of recycla- ble material like paper, card, plastic, drink cans and crisp packets.
“And they had a lovely day on their visit. We have the countryside on the curriculum for this term and the bee visit fitted perfectly with this.
“They learned so much and have so many follow-up activities to take back to school - for example, they will be performing a bee dance at a school assembly next week (May 23) and talking to other pupils about bees, pollen and the bee family.
“The children were delighted to see the Queen Bee, too, and came back to school buzzing.”
During the visit the children saw honeybees in the Anglia Co-operative hives from the safety of a purposebuilt observatory and also learned all about bees from representatives of the Peterborough and District Beekeepers’ Association (PDBKA).
As a ‘thank you’ for creating the giant flower, Anglia Co-operative gave the youngsters a butterfly kit containing caterpillars, feed and full instructions for hatching painted lady butterflies into their school garden.
To mark the launch of the 2012 school visits - which continue until mid-july - Anglia Co-operative presented the PDBKA with a cheque for £7,000, money raised by the sale of its 2012 Members calendar.
PDBKA committee member Richard Davies said: “We were dumbfounded by the amount of money - to think that Anglia Co-operative Members think so much about honeybees to raise so much for us.”