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

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. 

Zoo Field Trip 11/14/13

Summary by Lillian Shallow

Photographs by Zachary Zollman

     The Roosevelt Bee Group recently accompanied Ms. Sarah Barnard on a trip to the world renowned San Diego Zoo. It was a wonderful and very educational trip. Unfortunately, the zoo's observational bee colony has mysteriously died, and we suspect that it has suffered a terrible case of CCD (colony collapse disorder), so there weren't any bees on exhibit. However, we did have the opportunity to observe some wild bee hives that the San Diego Zoo has allowed to inhabit their property. We were only able to find two; one in "The Lost Forest", and the other near the primate exhibits on the "Monkey Trail." We do know that there are others, but we do not know how many because the zoo does not do any type of research on these bees, but graciously allows them to live at the zoo.

     As for the currently empty observational hive, the Bee Group brainstormed ideas and theories about why the colony died, and how to improve the hive. We also learned many fun facts about bees, such as the fact that the zoo generally has hives of Cordoba bees, which are European and therefore they are not as resilient to disease. This may have led to the downfall of the hive at the San Diego Zoo.

     In conclusion, our trip to the zoo was very informational, and provided our group with a new outlook on observation hives in general. In the end, we were left with this question; What makes observation hives work, and why or why not?

This enclosure used to house a bee hive. We got a chance to see it in the San Diego Zoo's Insect House.

This is first of the two wild bee hives that we found living at the San Diego Zoo.

This is the second of the two wild bee hives that we found living at the San Diego Zoo.

This is a panel about the role of insects in ecology. It pointed out that insects can pollinate our plants, eat our garden pests, and decompose our waste.