Bee Resilient

Climate conscious. Empowered. Hopeful.

Children who know they can make a difference.

Children are curious about the world around them and eager to care for it. Bee Resilient gives them a structured, hands-on way to explore their place, discover what makes their community strong, and choose what they can do to help – building confidence and climate-conscious action, one practical step at a time.

A young child in a beekeeping suit holding a smoker

The tangible outcome

Every school leaves with a living Community Climate Adaptation Plan.

It isn't a worksheet in a folder. It's a plan the students build together and keep acting on long after the programme ends.

See how the programme works

Four themes

Bees are a climate signal children can see for themselves.

Four themes, taught together – in the classroom, at the hive and in the garden rather than from a textbook. Each one feeds into the Community Climate Adaptation Plan.

Bee Curious

How do bees and healthy communities work together?

Bee Native

How do healthy soil and local habitats support life?

What changes our environment, and how can we prepare?

Bee Together

How do we turn learning into community action?

See how the programme works Talk to us about bringing it to your school

Breakout Resilience Labs

Native bees (Ngāro Huruhuru), soil, gardens and cymatics – experiential breakouts inside the adaptation journey.

Every lab ends with the same question: what does this teach us about making our community more resilient?

Meet our Native Bees (Ngāro Huruhuru)

Native pollinators, habitat and biodiversity.

Inside the Hive

Preparation, communication, shared resources and collective action.

Soil = Resilience

Soil health, water retention, food growing and regeneration.

Plant for the Future

Pollinator habitat, shade, food, biodiversity and climate-ready gardens.

See Sound – Cymatics

A sensory demonstration of vibration and visible patterns, for observation and systems thinking.

Bee Breathing

A simple paced-breathing tool to practise calm and self-regulation.

Explore the Resilience Labs

The milestone

Community Bee Day.

Children present their Community Climate Adaptation Plan back to the adults who will help carry it out. Community partners make commitments, and the school launches its own Forest of Resilience – the first planting of what the plan sets in motion.

Impact & evidence

What we'll measure, as the Leigh pilot grows.

The Leigh School pilot is establishing the first baseline. Once it does, this is what we'll track and publish – season on season.

Students

Reached through the programme

Households

Surveyed for local risk and resilience knowledge

Actions

Adaptation actions prioritised and carried out

Habitats

Planted as part of each Forest of Resilience

Whānau

Family preparedness actions completed

Partners

Community organisations committed at Bee Day

Hives

Observed and cared for by students

Reinvested

Funds returned to the next resilience action

Our story

What if children could learn these lessons before they ever needed them?

Bee Resilient grew out of that question – out of watching how naturally children take to bees, and how much a hive can teach about preparation, shared resources and collective care. The Leigh School pilot is built to travel: the same programme, adapted to any community's own place, risks and strengths.

Grass Esposti

Co-founder — Queen Bee, Lead Beekeeper & Bee Education, BeeTopia NZ Limited

Founder of the NZ Honey Tasting Shed and co-founder of Bee Resilient. Leads every hive visit and bee-education session, and manages the school hive — monthly inspections, hive weight data and all.

Write a letter to Grass No school login? Request access

Dr Ngaire Hart

Chief Pollinator — Native Bee (Ngāro Huruhuru) Science, AUT · Ngāti Wai

Wrote her PhD on New Zealand's native bees and is the foremost authority on all 28 native species, bridging mātauranga Māori and western science directly with students. Read more on her research.

Write a letter to Dr Ngaire No school login? Request access

Kelly Hamilton

Co-founder & Programme Director — Community, Grants & Media

Manages coordination, scheduling and stakeholder engagement for Bee Resilient, and is Leigh School's single point of contact — leading the community connections, grant funding and media that make sure the programme delivers start to finish. Sales & Acquisition Associate at Kelly Hamilton Property.

Write a letter to Kelly No school login? Request access

Michelle Esposti

Worker Bee — Hands-On Support & Early Childhood Outreach, BeeTopia NZ Limited

Leads much of BeeTopia NZ Limited's outreach into early childhood centres and primary schools.

Partner pathway

Bring Bee Resilient to your community.

However you're placed to help, there's a clear way in.

Schools

Run the programme with your students and leave with your own Community Climate Adaptation Plan.

Funders & councils

Back a pilot, a region, or the equipment that makes the programme possible.

Businesses

Sponsor a school, a lab, or a hive – in cash or in kind.

Emergency-management agencies

Connect local hazard knowledge directly into student-led planning.

Science partners

Contribute expertise to the citizen-science and native bee (Ngāro Huruhuru) strands.

International delivery partners

Help adapt the programme for a new community, built to travel from Leigh School.

Email us about partnering See partnership tiers

Be a resilience influencer

Send us fifteen seconds on what resilience means to you.

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.

Leigh School students and teachers exploring a native garden

Film it vertical

Phone held upright, 15 to 60 seconds. Good light, no script. Your face and your voice are the whole thing.

Tell one true story

A time something was hard and you kept going. Not advice, not a lecture – just what happened and what got you through.

Send it here

Upload below. We reply to everyone, and we ask before we post anything.