29th May 2023
A beautiful, sunny May bank holiday Monday well-spent at the London Museum of Water and Steam in Brentford, West London exploring the exciting world of pollinators and learning how to support them.
We spent the day at the museum providing ‘pollinator themed’ activities for visiting children and families. The museum’s flower rich and pollinator friendly garden was the perfect setting for the day’s event, with activities like the pollinator game, making your own bee hotels and a bubble disco.
Konstantinos Tsiolis, our pollinator ecologist and the team educated families on the benefits of pollinators through the ‘Pollinator game’, a fun activity where various everyday products are scanned, revealing how dependent they are on pollinators. Surprisingly, some products like strawberries, vanilla, apples, chocolate, coffee and some spices rely almost entirely on pollination!
Throughout the day members of the public and Kew Bridge Engine Trust had the opportunity to participate in FIT (Flower-Insect Timed) Counts with members of the PLT team, helping to build a picture of pollinator numbers in the area. It was good to see enthusiasm and encouragement for protecting pollinators such as bees, butterflies, and beetles.
The children were excited to create their own bee hotels which they could take home – designed to provide important nesting habitat for solitary bees. An often-overlooked group of pollinators. Many children were keen to show off their creations, plant pollinator friendly seeds in their gardens, and to see how many bees will occupy their bee hotel at home.
We’d like to say a big thank you to the London Museum of Water and Steam for being supportive and enthusiastic hosts for this event, and we hope to collaborate again in the future.
