Bee kind.
Bee curious.
Bee humble.
Bee resilient.
Creating the world's next bee advocates.
Bee kind.
Bee curious.
Bee humble.
Bee resilient.
Creating the world's next bee advocates.
Leigh School · Rodney · Aotearoa NZ
Bee Resilient teaches young people to read a changing climate through its pollinators - hives, native bees (Ngāro Huruhuru), gardens, hazard maps and real citizen science, with the pilot run from Leigh School in Rodney and built to travel.
The programme
Three strands, taught together, in the classroom, at the hive and in the garden rather than from a textbook.
01
Hives, native bees (Ngāro Huruhuru), pollination and food systems — taught by working beekeepers and scientists, with microscopes and real specimens.
02
Pollinator gardens, habitat and hazard mapping, planting across the seasons and monitoring what survives a hotter, wetter year.
03
Citizen science the students own: their own observations, their own dataset, their own case for the Ngāro Huruhuru that live alongside them.
Queen Bee & Lead Beekeeper, BeeTopia NZ Limited
Runs the hives at the heart of the programme and leads every hive session with students.
Chief Pollinator, Native Bee (Ngāro Huruhuru) Science
Brings native bee (Ngāro Huruhuru) science and mātauranga Māori into the programme's citizen-science strand.
Community Pollinator & Co-founder, Bee Advocacy
Connects Bee Resilient to the wider movement of schools, partners and communities it belongs to.
Beekeeper & Early Childhood Educator, BeeTopia NZ Limited
Leads much of BeeTopia's outreach into early childhood centres and primary schools.
Our objectives
Funding is provided to Bee Resilient to deliver a series of community workshops, school sessions and wānanga to build understanding of local climate hazards and practical adaptation actions.
Bee Resilient will host facilitated community workshops that explain how these hazards affect local food systems, pollinators and community wellbeing. Sessions will combine accessible climate science with local context, drawing on recent flooding events and changing seasonal patterns experienced by residents.
Wānanga-style gatherings will integrate mātauranga Māori perspectives on kaitiakitanga, whenua and intergenerational resilience.
Educational resources will include practical guides on low-emissions food practices, pollinator-friendly planting, water conservation and regenerative gardening techniques that increase soil health and climate resilience.
School-based programmes will engage rangatahi through hands-on learning about pollination, food security and local adaptation strategies.
Public events will provide interactive demonstrations, including native planting techniques, habitat restoration guidance and small-scale water management concepts such as rain gardens and shade planting.
These activities will help participants connect climate impacts to tangible, achievable actions. By combining workshops, educational materials and practical demonstrations, Bee Resilient will build climate literacy and empower community members to understand risks and take proactive, nature-based adaptation steps.
Bee Resilient delivers both physical interventions and behaviour change initiatives to support emissions reduction. Physical actions include establishing native and pollinator-friendly planting to strengthen biodiversity, improve soil health, increase local food-growing capacity and support natural carbon sequestration.
Be a resilience influencer
Bees are the most resilient creatures we know, and children learn resilience best from other people’s real stories. Film one on your phone and we will share the best of them on the Bee Resilient Instagram and in the classroom.
01
Phone held upright, 15 to 60 seconds. Good light, no script. Your face and your voice are the whole thing.
02
A time something was hard and you kept going. Not advice, not a lecture — just what happened and what got you through.
03
Upload below. We reply to everyone, and we ask before we post anything.
