The Latest News In New Zealand

Welcome to our latest bumblebee news.

We hope you enjoy seeing bumblebees in your garden or local park.  Over summer the bumbles work hard pollinating flowers, fruit trees and a host of other plants. The queen is busy breeding bees, producing male offspring and new queens. In autumn the old queens and her workers will die off while the new queens will hibernate in the soil over winter to establish new nests in the following year. It’s an evergreen cycle of bumblebee life.

Follow our news via Facebook @NZBCT

Garden to Table School Programme

November 2023 has been an amazing month for the Trust with the roll out of a new school education programme in association with Garden to Table.
NZBCT sent out 800 books ‘Bumblebees have Smelly Feet’ to 80 schools and sent live bumblebee hives to 31 schools. Trust members Geoff & Rachel also visited 6 schools in the Tauranga region. The response has just been wonderful, seeing the children interact with the bumblebee story and learn about the importance of pollination. Many, many thanks to everyone who helped and to our fabulous sponsors. Here’s some pics from Maketu School, Pahoiha School, Pukehina School, Rangiruru School, St Mary’s Catholic School & Whakamarama School.

Saving the sounds of summer

NZ Bumblebee Conservation Trust (NZBCT) works to conserve, preserve and grow the species and numbers of bumblebees in New Zealand, this work is not just for the love of our humming friends it is in fact one for the wellbeing of our planet.

The humble bumblebee is recognised by scientists across the world as a ‘keystone species’, meaning it is vital for ecosystems, they are in fact important pollinators, sometimes pollinating crops that no other insect can. “One in every three spoonsful of food we put in our mouths is from a crop totally dependent on a pollinator insect” Geoff Brunsden, NZBCT Co-founder explains further. The stark truth is, as Einstein famously said, “without bees’ mankind has 4 years to live”.

This humble bumblebee is in fact quite the powerhouse, with a single bumblebee doing up to 50 times the work of a honeybee and carrying a bigger payload of pollen. Geoff tells us that “we can all be part of protecting this fascinating species, and this is what NZ Bumblebee Conservation Trust is all about”.

Their latest campaign ‘Saving the Sounds of the Summer’ is bringing the joy of bumblebees to communities all around the bay and in the most practical and fun way. “The Bay of Plenty is full of passionate, skilled gardeners and nature enthusiasts and by making your space and place more bumblebee friendly we can all save the sounds of summer together”. So how can you be part of this mission?

NZBCT alongside their founding sponsor Wright Family Foundation will be sponsoring a select number of garden bumblebee hives to the community. The Wright Family Foundation is passionate about supporting the NZBT’s mission. The late Chloe Wright (Founder and CEO Wright Family Foundation) explained “the beehive offers our communities an incredible opportunity to make a positive difference in the world, it is about what we can do for the environment”.

The hives come with a colony of bumblebees keen to get busy in their new space. “We think these hives will offer an engaging hands-on way to learn and become excited about protecting our treasured bumblebee, we welcome enquiries from all groups throughout the BOP from schools and community gardens to retirement villages and churches” encourages Geoff. “We would love to see parents and grandparents who may be looking for a great Christmas gift that gives back, to think about a bumblebee hive”.

If you or your organisation would like to find out more about the bumblebee hives you can contact Geoff direct at geoff@nzbct.org.nz

Get in touch with us for more information today bumblebuzz@nzbct.org.nz

A WORD FROM BUZZLES, OUR OWN BEE MESSENGER

Dear Supporting Member,

We thought it time that we gave our valued members an update on where we have’ buzzed’ from and where we are currently ‘buzzing’ to particularly as we get closer to our first birthday.

A recap why we are here. Co-founder Geoff Brunsden has been passionately working with wildflowers for over 30 years now in NZ and always promoted them for their super qualities in providing fabulous food for bees and their pollinator friends. During one of his and wife Liz’s English garden roaming’s they came across the existence of the UK Bumblebee Conservation Trust and “bingo” the seed was sown to set up a similar here in NZ. We all knew bees and their friends were in trouble but there wasn’t any real way to get out a message to all New Zealanders.

So, like the UK it was decided that the Bumblebee was the most passive, cute and iconic pollinator there was to help spread the word in the most fun loving way. This is where Helen Johnson stepped in. Seeing a little media rambling about Geoff’s wishes she tracked him down and in the nicest way ‘made it happen’ to get our NZ trust up and running. So we did it and here we are thanks to your support and the dedicated special funding of The Wright Foundation and Zonda Beneficial’s.

But we have a long way to go. We look now at our UK counterpart who are now 10 years old! However, being so young we are encouraged by the founder of the UK Trust Dave Goulson who says:

“The early days were tough. We had no staff just a handful of volunteers and zero experience as to run the whole thing.” But thanks to a funding grant and dedicated staff they got their feet on the ground says Dave.

To date:

• We have had our commissioned ‘Bumblebee song’ recorded and the ‘special dance’ videoed-check it out on our web.
• Many educational ‘school’ activity boxes have been developed and produced by ‘The House of Science’ in Tauranga.
• Our Bee experts have been brilliant in assisting us answering the questions that members and site visitors send us.
• Given dozens of talks and demonstrations promoting the importance of bumblebees, sometimes with live bumblebee hives, to various shows, groups and organizations.
• We have had several media launches to raise our profile.
• NZBCT has developed a face-book page which we are endeavoring to keep active. Do send us photos that we can add to our album.
• A major promotion into schools via Garden to Table, where we sent our 800 books & 31 hives to 80 schools.
• So many other plans which will come to fruition once we can increase our membership numbers.

Thank you from us and the bumble bees for your support.