Buzz Care: Helping Bees, Helping the Planet

by Sapphie and Shannon – Grade 5E

Who We Are and Why We Chose Bees

Hello! We are students from the German European School Manila, and we are doing our PYP Exhibition. We are Sapphie and Shannon, and we are both in Grade 5. Our topic is about bees.

Our group mentor, Ms. Tonette Bajao, has been guiding us and helping bring our exhibition project to life. We are very thankful for her support and encouragement throughout this journey.

Why did we choose this topic? It's because we love bees! They pollinate our crops and flowers, helping them grow. This is good for the ecosystem and the planet.

The name of our group is "Buzz Care" because we care about bees. Bees are important for the ecosystem and provide food resources for people. We want to help those in need by protecting bees. That’s why we decided to name our group Buzz Care.

We also made our group logo. The logo is a simple drawing of a bee, which represents the focus of our project. It shows our message of care, teamwork, and the importance of bees in keeping our world healthy.

Our Central Idea: Bees, Humans, and the Ecosystem

The central idea of our topic is the impact of human actions on bee populations and their role in the ecosystem.

Here are our Lines of Inquiry (LOIs):

 LOI #1: What roles do bees play in maintaining ecosystem balance?

 LOI #2: How do human activities impact bee populations and their environment?

 LOI #3: What actions can individuals and communities take to protect bees from extinction?

What We Discovered

In LOI #1, we learned that bees play a key role in the ecosystem along with other pollinators. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, bees pollinate around 75% of crops around the world. This shows how important bees are to our planet. Without bees, we wouldn’t have many of the foods we enjoy for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or even snacks.

In LOI #2, we explored how human activities affect bee populations and their environment. Some of the main threats to bees include air pollution, invasive species, lack of varied nectar, climate change, low genetic diversity, and the overuse of pesticides. These are some of the reasons bees are dying, and our actions are affecting them and their habitats. We depend on bees to grow crops and flowers, so protecting them helps us too.

In LOI #3, we focused on how individuals and communities can help protect bees from extinction. There are many simple ways to help bees, like planting a garden with flowers they can pollinate and educating others about why bees are important and how they are being harmed.

Taking Action for Bees

For our personal action plan, we planted sunflower seeds at home. We hope to attract bees and other pollinators to visit the sunflowers.

For our community action plan, we planted bee-friendly plants in our school garden and around the school vicinity. The plants we chose were:

·         Chinese hibiscus (Gumamela)

·         Sunflowers (Mirasol)

·         Lantana (Lantana camara or Baho-baho)

·         Celosia (Cockscomb)

·         Yellow candle (Cassia alata or Akapulko)

·         Vinca (Madagascar periwinkle or Tsitsirika)

We also made plant signs to remind students not to pick the flowers so that the bees could visit and pollinate them. In addition, we noticed that there were plenty of scrap papers being thrown away in school. To help reduce waste, we collected and recycled the scrap papers and turned them into small notepads that can be reused by students.

For our global action plan, we want to post more information about our group online so that students or teachers around the world might be inspired to choose bees as a topic, too.

Our Hopes for the Future

Through this exhibition, we learned a lot about bees and how important they are. We also learned that we can all help protect them in big and small ways. We hope that in the future, bees will still be around, pollinating plants and helping the world stay healthy.