Kingdom Shopping Centre have introduced a new community engagement project, working with nurseries and schools within Glenrothes on our Just Bee Cause campaign.
Launching in May 2019, Just Bee Cause is a partnership campaign with a key focus in driving awareness around the importance of bees within the environment for several reasons, including pollination and health, to name but a few.
At the Kingdom Shopping Centre, we want to promote a positive message about bees and encourage new learning in partnershipwith Bee Buddies. There are lots of easy ways we help save thebees and we want you to help save them with us.
Let’s get the buzz back that bees are important to our ecosystem!
Bee Buddies are a dynamic Scottish charity who specialise in education, pollination and bees. Their sensory workshops have been designed to be inclusive for all as well as being fun and imaginative. All their activities follow the ‘Curriculum of Excellence’ promoting interaction and engagement with key bee and educational themes.
Founded in 2017 by Beekeeper Kay Rooney, Bee Buddies has grown from strength to strength. Funding from The Peoples Project, National Lottery Awards For All, The Cooperative, Asda and Bank Of Scotland School for Social Entrepreneurs has allowed investment in the activities that children find fun as well as being educational.
"Bee Buddies are absolutely buzzing to be part of this fantastic campaign by taking our educational workshops and Kingdom Shopping Centre's activity pack to the schools in the local area."
Kay Rooney,
CEO for Bee Buddies.
The campaign is being delivered by a hive of activity and we are buzzing to share this with you!
In April 2019, the Centre took ownership of two beehives made locally in Fife with 100% recycled materials.
The Hives were decorated by Fife College across three departments, including ‘Access to Construction Skills’, ‘Access to Further Education’ and ‘Jewellery & Art’.
Each hive has its own special design which took the artist and student Kayleigh Anderson from Fife College over two weeks of intense painting with the finest attention to detail.
The hives are located safely within the Centre’s grounds, away from the public and a team of staff from the Kingdom Shopping Centre are now trained Beekeepers.
Recycled materials were used to create bee-friendly flower beds, including discarded pallets donated from retail deliveries. Flowers of lavender and pansies were planted as a food source for the colony of bees.
As part of the Centre’s commitment to creating an environment where 2 beehives and their colonies can thrive, the Centre has also invested in staff training. Kingdom Shopping Centre now has 5 trained staff who take great pride and care in looking after the bees.
Ray Ednie who is employed at the Kingdom Shopping Centre in their maintenance team also has a new remit of beekeeping said “I check in on the bees and love to see them thrive in their hives, it really is therapeutic to watch them. I built flower beds for the bees and have bowls of water for them to take a drink from”.
Just Bee Cause is a community project encouraging creativity through learning.
The process involves a design where nurseries and schools can choose a bee-related theme of their choice and paint, draw or add materials onto laser cut hexagonal honeycombs.
Every pupil in the class will receive one wooden honeycomb and we would encourage schools to create one honeycomb design that will then be exhibited within the Kingdom Shopping Centre during the summer.
The public will get an opportunity to view and vote for their favourite and a £500.00 pot of prize money is up for grabs for best honeycomb design.
With thanks to Little Thistle (littlethistle.co.uk) for sponsoring the honeycomb materials.
An activity pack has been designed and will be given out to nurseries and schools taking part in Just Bee Cause but also to the general public to raise awareness of bees.
The activity pack is loaded with lots of fun facts and knowledge of bees with quizzes and colouring in activity.
The pack will be given out free along with a Just Bee Cause bag to all pupils taking part and Kingdom Shopping Centre’s ‘Give a gift’ day to the public.
Bees are sadly in trouble and numbers are dropping across the world. We are not looking at one single cause of the decline of the bee population but rather several threats posed to the bees and their environment. This includes the use of pesticides and loss of their habitat.
How we use the land around us is changing and as towns and cities expand, agriculture becomes more intensive which often results in the loss of wild spaces for bees to thrive including their food source.
World Bee Day took place in May and to help celebrate this all-important day, Kingdom Shopping Centre are delivered a hive of activities on the 25th May 2019, free for all to enjoy! Kingdom shoppers had the chance to get up close to bees and meet the team of beekeepers at Bee Buddies! The Hive, […]
Read moreKingdom Shopping Centre in collaboration with Fife based charity ‘Bee Buddies’ are delivering a number of workshops to nurseries and schools throughout the Kingdom. The workshops are designed to be fun and interactive and to help support schools with their ‘Just Bee Cause’ creative design project. We understand the importance of achieving the aims […]
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