Lacombe Composite High School showcased its Bee-Wise project yesterday, inviting elementary school classes, sponsors and community members for a celebration of just how far the initiative has come.

The project is getting recognized as an “outstanding environmental achievement,” winning an award from the Alberta Emerald Foundation for youth initiatives.

Supervising teacher Steven Schultz says they will be presented with the award on June 6.

Schultz adds that he’s proud of his students for seeing the project through from beginning to end.

(LCHS Grade 11 student Avy Lamb donning her bee suit on May 31.)

It was those students in the school's EcoVision Club, who were concerned about the declining population of native and honey bees and decided to start Bee-Wise.

“We had read up a lot about bees and decided that the honey bees would probably be the best approach to helping our environment,” says Grade 10 student Laine Unger, who spends about 10 hours each week beekeeping and earning credits in his Green Certificate Program.

“Bees in our environment play a very important pollination role and are pollinators for 70 per cent of our fruit and grain crops worldwide.”

Schultz says the next step in the Bee-Wise project will be offering beekeeping courses and workshops for the public, where students will get to share what they’ve learned. That will be sponsored by the Agriculture Financial Services Corporation, he says.

“We’re really, really excited about that opportunity because it provides my students with another avenue of providing community members with the expertise that they’ve discovered.”

(LCHS teacher Steven Schultz speaking to guests celebrating Bee-Wise's progress on May 31.)