GLOBAL AMBASSADORS FOR BEES: 

Today, the pupils of 4th, 5th and 6th Class, with their teacher Edel Leech (Principal), Bríd Fenlon (SET, Project CoOrdinator) and Emer O'Doherty (CT) hosted a zoom meeting with representatives from Galway County Council and Nollaig McGuinness, Community Engagement Officer with Galway2020. The purpose of the meeting was to showcase the work involved in bringing the school's environmental "Bee Loud" project to a successful conclusion. 

The guests were welcomed by Edel, who then showed them a short film narrated by Éanna Ní Lamhna (RTÉ, author) detailing the children's work and giving an insight into the unique and inspiring opportunities the children received. Before the zoom meeting concluded Jack, Ella, Daniel and Emily delivered an impressive and passionate message to Galway CoCo about the importance of being mindful of the plight of pollinators, especially bees, and of being sensitive in their management and maintenance of potential habitats on roadsides, public parks and motorway embankments. 

Reducing cutting, the use of sprays and pesticides, respecting the nesting and flowering season were some of the recommendations by the children of Kiltiernan NS. 

The children were commended for their work by Cllr. Martina Kinnane, Cllr. Joe Byrne and Nollaig McGuinness. 

This was one of the final aims of this extensive project - that the children, inspired by learning from experts, expressing their response through art and writing, putting this knowledge into action by planting pollinator friendly plants would then be confident enough to advocate to those in power on behalf of the bee. 

Here are the children's speeches to the Galway County Councillors: 

Jack's Address:

Members of the Council, Ms. Leech, Ms. Fenlon, Ms. O Doherty, fellow classmates! We are here today to ask two very important questions. - What can we do to stem our declining bee population? - What would happen if the only food crops we could live on were wheat, rice and corn? The bees are just not black and yellow furry insects, hopping from flower to flower. They play a really important role in our ecosystem. Without them, our ecosystem would be destroyed and it would even effect our global food supply. Did you know? Bees pollinate 80% of our world's plants and 90 different food crops. One out of every three bits of food you eat is there because of pollinators. We all have a part to play to help minimize the decline of our precious bee population. - Jack (4th Class)

Ella's speech:

Firstly, anyone who has a garden or a small green space could plant some bee friendly plants and carry out the gardening in a more pollinator friendly manner: Reduce sprays, Cut less, Respect the flowering and nesting season! - LET IT BEE - Ella (4th  Class)

Daniel's Speech:

Secondly those responsible for maintaining our green public spaces could adopt more bee friendly practices. Furthermore those responsible for road planning could aim to incorporate bee friendly areas into their future designs. Motorway verges are a perfect place for Bees' habitats and can BEE wild. Let verges go wild! Bee beautiful public parks! Let it Bee known! - Daniel (4th Class)

Emily's speech:

There are some people who would disagree with us and say: "Our places will not look clean and tidy." - "It looks like we are not doing our jobs." - There's a safety issue!" - "There will be so much pollen around" - "People would litter in overgrown areas!" However, I think we have shown that if we all make a change to the way we think about the bees' habitats we can stop the declining bee population. So we propose that the Council should have a policy that promotes the wilding of public spaces to allow our native pollinators to thrive. - Emily (5th Class)

Jack concluded our presentation to the Galway County Councillors with the following words: 

We in Kiltiernan NS are doing our bit, we want you to do your bit too! As Shakespeare once wrote... to BEE or not to BEE.... that is the question. What is your answer? In conclusion as Desmond Tutu said: "Do your little bit of good where you are. It's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world." Thank you for taking the time to listen to us today and we hope you can advocate for change too!

- Jack (4th Class) on behalf of Kiltiernan NS and our pollinators

 BEE LOUD ART TRAIL....

To celebrate Galway 2020 Capital of Culture our artist, Veronika Straberger had designed an art trail to exhibit the children's work and bring visitors to the many sights of our surrounding beautiful landscape. Due to the pandemic we had to change our plans and have now created this virtual art trail to bring you all on a little journey and share with you the beauties of the Burren Landscape, Coole Park Forest and Thoor Ballylee - the home of the Irish poet William Butler Yeats. We hope you can come and visit us soon and enjoy all the beautiful places County Galway has to offer.

 HELP SAVE OUR POLLINATORS...

Dear visitors, 

With our signs we would like to tell you about the actions we are taking towards creating biodiversity friendly habitats. We are letting the weeds and wildflowers grow to provide shelter and food for our pollinators and not because we are too lazy to mow!

If you would like to find out how you can create pollinator friendly habitats go visit: 

https://pollinators.ie/

After a successful 5 year pilot project, the All Ireland Pollinator plan has been extended until 2025!

On their website you can find useful tips and links on rewilding and supporting native pollinating insects. 

Their website will show you how you can help provide much-needed food and shelter for our pollinating insects by taking some simple actions, while creating a beautiful, colourful garden!

https://pollinators.ie/gardens/

You can also pledge your garden for pollinators and join the ever growing map of Ireland's pollinator friendly zones. Follow this link and register your garden with Biodiversity Ireland to show you care: 

https://pollinators.biodiversityireland.ie/

The data collected will help scientists develop plans to reverse the island-wide decline in pollinating insects. 

PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE WITH ALIS ...

PJ Kelly from ALIS came today to outline potential areas for rewilding, specifically where our flowering gorse bushes grow on the motorway embankment. PJ explained the work ALIS does in relation to maintaining roadside verges. 

We discussed a policy for only mowing outside of flowering and nesting season and the reduction of weed killers. PJ supports this idea.

At the moment ALIS is only cutting the roadside margin up to 1.2m to 2m, allowing the outside areas to grow wild. PJ is hoping for an extension of this trial period leading to a new policy in cutting the road side verges, which we would support also. 

We identified an area of unused public land where gorse bushes are now in full bloom. The current Galway County Council contract with ALIS would demand for the gorse bushes to be eradicated. 

But we are hoping that Galway County Council would consider dedicating this little hillock for a rewilding pilot project. It would be an ideal location to establish more native hedgerow plants and wildflowers to create wildlife habitat. We hope Galway County Council agrees. 

Thank you ALIS for being our partner and we are looking forward to future collaborations!

PLANTING FOR POLLINATORS

After a long winter spring is finally here. To welcome our pollinator friends back after their winter hibernation we decided to plant some food for them on our school grounds....

We filled window boxes and our car tyre planters with soil...

...and planted lots of delicious herbs and edible flowers.

We planted some Lavender, Mint, Oregano, Rosemary, Thyme, Calendula and Nasturtiums. These plants produce nectar and pollen for pollinating insects and they are all edible too! ... We will surely have a taste when they have grown a bit bigger.

.... and after some heavy lifting...

We are proud to show you our finished work...

Come join us and get planting too !!!

 

 UPCYCLING....

There are sooo many things that humans produce and use, but what happens when we are finished using them? Car tyres need to be replaced for road safety regularly. But what happens with the old car tyres? They do not biodegrade and worldwide we dispose of hundreds of millions of car tyres every year! Up until the 1980s car tyres were stockpiled in landfills. There are an estimated 2-3 billion car tyres deposited in landfills. You cannot burn car tyres because burning old rubber releases dangerous toxins into the air. Today most old car tyres are recycled in special recycling plants. 

Given our connection to the Motorway we decided to use old car tyres for our upcycling project. We are giving them a new lease of life and transform them into planters for our school garden.   

Tyre Aware in Ballindereen kindly gave us some old car tyres we could upcycle. After washing off the dirt, we painted our tyres inspired by our pollinator friends. 

We will plant our car tyres in spring and fill them with pollinator friendly herbs to provide nectar and pollen for bees and other pollinating insects!

 Blessing of the Bees

Fionn (2nd Class) - "The Priest Blessing the Hive"

The Blessing of the Bees is a tradition that goes back centuries in Ireland. Ancient Irish manuscripts reveal bees were sacred animals and they were brought to the country from Wales in the 5th century, by a Saint named Modomnóc, also know as Modomhnóg.

At some point, every home in Ireland would have had access to a beehive. They used honey as a form of adding sweetness to the food, and wax was used to make candles. Beekeeping was also protected under the "Bee Judgements" of the Brehon Laws.

People invited the parish priest to bless the bees and their beehive.

Glen (2nd Class) - "Blessing the Bees..."