One of the benefits of living in FNQ is that our minimum temperatures don’t drop nearly as much as the rest of the country. Our bees on the coast are currently waking up to a pleasant 18-20 degrees, although our tablelands hives are having to pull on their winter woollies.
This month our branch had 3 events where we could reach our Cairns community.
Our stall at the EcoFiesta, Qld’s premier event celebrating sustainability was well attended. We had people 2 and 3 deep wanting to talk to our members about all things native bees, as well as viewing our live hive of T.sapiens and tasting some native bee honey. Conservatively we had meaningful conversations with over 300 people during the day. Many opportunities arose from the day including people wanting to book our branch to speak at garden clubs and schools. We are well on the way of reaching our goals of raising awareness and helping to educate the community about native bees. After the EcoFiesta our Facebook membership numbers reached 253. Not bad for the first 11 months since we started!
Following the EcoFiesta success we met with a garden club in Bunnings Cairns where we had another informative session about native bees with interested gardeners.
On 23 July, Tim Heard led a fascinating workshop today at the Babinda Golf Club. Full report in the next Cross Pollinator.
Another job has been the finalisation of a Cairns Council grant submission which if successful will see our branch with some wonderful resources. Although writing submissions isn’t an exciting task, it has helped us to widen our contacts and come up with some creative ways of bringing native bees to the public! We should know the result of this submission in about a week, so everyone keep your fingers crossed! Full report on this submission will be in the next Cross Pollinator.
From: Stewart Clarke sclarkehk@gmail.com, Chair and Representative to ANBA
Cairns Native Bee Association Facebook group,
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1269746467098269