News!

Summary by Zachary Zollman

Images by Zachary Zollman and Ms. Hiveley

     The Roosevelt Bee Group is happy to announce that we are currently working with Walt on our owl box that will bee hung up in Florida Canyon. We also started work on an exciting new musical project. Look forward to hearing about that soon! We are also amazed that, coincidentally, Edible San Diego, Slow Food Urban San San Diego, and Sempra Energy sponsored a magazine for kids about bees that was passed out to all students at RMS. We would like to thank them for what they do. We are looking forward to our final Florida Canyon Adventure this Thursday and our first ever Native Plant Sale this Wednesday. Hope to see you there!

"Ian Bush" Manzanita will be sold at our Native Plant Sale this Wednesday

Bee Group Art Contest

      The Roosevelt Middle School Bee Group is proud to announce a new monthly art contest!!! This contest is open to everyone who is between ten and eighteen years old. All submissions must relate to bees. Inappropriate submissions will be disqualified. Plagiarism is illegal. The submissions can be in any form (photographs, sculptures, paintings, drawings, digital art, etc,). Submissions can bee sent in at any time; we will announce the May winner in about one month. Please include your name, art medium, a photo/file of your art, and your current age. The winning submissions will be posted, and may be used elsewhere on the website.

Sadly, due to the brief amount of time remaining in the school year, we will postpone the art contest until the 2014-2015 school year. Feel free to make bee art over the summer, though. Thank you!

Photographs/files of your work should bee sent to our email, rmsbeegroup@gmail.com 

Here are a few sample submissions:

This is a drawing by the amazing artist Hailee Heidick that encourages people to reduce harmful pesticide use.
©Hailee Heidick 2014

This is a photo of a bumble bee about to land on a clover in Central Pennsylvania. ©Zachary Zollman 2013

Florida Canyon Adventure 3/20/14

Summary by Molly Demer

Photographs by Zachary Zollman

The RMS Garden Club joined the RMS Bee Group  in our second to last 2014 Florida Canyon Adventure. 18 people (5 advisors and 13 students) walked over to our bee garden, which was previously cleared for planting. We then we sorted our seventy native plants by species and learned how much space each type of plant needed. We planted:

Cleveland Sage

California Buckwheat

San Diego Sunflower

Lemonade Berry

Yarrow

Bladderpod

Blue-eyed Grass

After planting, we watered the plants, and made rock rings around the plants so that they wouldn’t be trampled. As usual, we picked up trash as we went. We moved around some logs and created an extra space for our pollinator garden. This was a spectacular event. Thank you, volunteers!

We planted a lot of Blue-eyed grass!

Roosevelt Middle School IB Festival

Summary by Zachary Zollman

     Today was the annual Roosevelt Middle School I.B. (International Baccalaureate) Fest! Bee Group had a table, and we collected donations, gave away California Poppy Seeds, showed people one of our videos about Florida Canyon, and talked to them about bees. It was really great to get to inform people about the plight of the bees. We gave away about fifteen CA Poppy seed packets with informational cards about the Bee Group. These CA poppies will benefit all sorts of native pollinators, including bees. Overall, this was a really great event!

Thank you to our volunteers:

Jade Bushnell

Kai Delman

Hailee Heidick

Noah Herdman

Lillian Shallow

Zachary Zollman

This is a trifold that we made about Bee Group.  The trifold features screenshots of our videos, explanations of the importance of bees, a few paragraphs about what we do.

At our table, we had a computer with a video from a Florida Canyon Adventure, a box filled with CA Poppies, a donation box, field trip forms for our Florida Canyon Adventures, and a tri fold. 

Florida Canyon Adventure 2-20-14

Summary by Kai Delman

Photographs by Hailee Heidick

     On the 20^th of February, The Bee Group and Garden Club made another successful journey to Florida canyon. Our group consisted of 18 students and 4 advisors. We first learned about bones from an archeologist from UCSD. We looked at bones that we found on a previous adventure. The archeologist taught us that all mammal bones are similar, and that bones finish growing their ends at adulthood. We studied the bones, hypothesizing that the bones were from cattle. We reached this conclusion because the bone seemed to have been cut by a man made tool, which suggested that it was going to be eaten. These practices were common about a hundred years ago, so this bone was probably a hundred years old. After this great experience, we continued on to community service. We trimmed down eucalyptus trees that were engulfing native plants like California Buckwheat. After trimming many invasive plants, we moved farther down into the canyon and focused on cutting down St. John’s Wort, an invasive plant that is not native to San Diego. This was a really fun, successful event! Thank you, volunteers!

Florida Canyon Adventure 1/23/14

Summary by Lillian Shallow
Photographs by Zachary Zollman

Our third Bee Group Florida Canyon Adventure was a huge success! Garden Club joined us for this spectacular event. After we convened with Ranger Weber in the designated location, we all grabbed gloves and threw seed bombs, which we had made a month prior. We also planted California Poppy seeds. That done, Ranger Weber provided excellent entertainment as well as a much needed sprinkler check. When the sprinkler was sufficiently checked and the students sufficiently wet, Ranger Weber instructed the 22 students and 2 teachers on the art of moving logs to serve as benches. After this manual labor, we removed the invasive plant St. John's Wort, which originates in Southern Africa and has yellow flower buds when in bloom. We removed so much of this invasive plant! Overall, this was a very successful Florida Canyon Adventure, which will hopefully light the pathway to many future successful trips.

These are some of the seed bombs that we used to spread native plants in Florida Canyon.

This is one end of our restoration site in Florida Canyon. Soon it will bee a pollinator garden!

As you can see, Florida Canyon is directly across the street from Roosevelt Middle School (the building in the background). The kiosk will be repainted and the interior redesigned by the RMS Bee Group.

This is St. John's Wort, the invasive plant that we removed.

Seed Bomb Florida Canyon Adventure 12-19-13

Finished Seed Bombs

On December 19^th, 2013, the Roosevelt Bee Group met up with the Roosevelt Garden Club and Ranger Carina Weber. We made seed bombs, which are a small bundle of compost, clay, seeds, and water. Our seed bombs were thrown into Florida Canyon on January 20^th. The flower seeds that we put in the seed bombs include: White Sage (Salvia apiana), Blue Eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium bellum), Palmer’s Sage Wort (Artemisia palmeris), California Buckwheat (Erigonum fasciculatum), Wart Stem Ceanothus (Ceanothus verrucosus), Deerweed (Lotus scoparius), and Broom Baccharis (Bacharris sarothroides). All of these are native plants that grow in San Diego. This was a really fun event! Hers’s the “recipe” that we used to make our seed bombs.

Seed Bomb “Recipe”

Ingredients

5 parts dry clay, preferably powder

3 parts fine compost

1 part seeds, preferably of native plants

Just enough water to hold it together

1 Part Native Plant Seeds

5 Parts Clay

3 Parts Fine Compost

First, you put the clay on your work surface. Next, you add the compost, and then the seeds. It’s great to spread native plants, so bee sure to use seeds of native plants whenever possible! Always be sure that you are not putting seeds from invasive plants in your seed bombs. You can face fines for spreading invasive plants, especially on public lands. Next, you add a tiny tiny tiny amount of water. If this is not enough, add a tiny tiny tiny bit more. Repeat previous step until your seed bombs form a sort of dough. It is important to not let your seed bombs fall apart, but if you add too much water, your seeds could sprout prematurely or rot. Let the seed bombs dry for a few days, and then find an empty space and throw your seed bombs! Save the bees!

Thank you, volunteers!