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My Story
My Story
Hi! I'm Bill Beindorf and I'm a 7th grade student attending Medea Creek Middle School in Oak Park, CA. In February 2020, my Environmental Elective teacher, Mrs. Wilsker, introduced my to the concept of biodiversity. My class spent time learning about our local habitat, had Dr Knight, our Superintendent, come in as a guest speaker, and took a field trip down to the creek behind school to investigate local wildlife. When I learned about how much of a struggle the California native bees and other pollinators were having, I knew I had to help solve this problem!
Over the last several months I have worked to develop and implement plans for restoring native habitat on campus at Medea Creek. I was chosen as a finalist for the OurEcho Challenge put on by EarthEcho International, and was given some funding and support to put my plan into action.
Why Are Native Bees So Important?
Why Are Native Bees So Important?
The native bees pollinate the native plants which in turn will help biodiversity in the area. For the chaparral here in Oak Park, the bees especially need our help. Native bees prefer native plants for their food, and native plants need native pollinators to spread their pollen and keep the plants alive and well. The native bees prefer native plants but also majorly help pollinate local agriculture and gardens as well.
Other school based groups in OPUSD are also helping to get Oak Park to return to being a healthy ecosystem and a biodiversity "hot spot."
Background About my Bee Project
Background About my Bee Project
How it All Began
How it All Began
This all started when the superintendent, Dr. Knight, came to my class as a guest speaker and talked about the issues in our local ecosystem, one of these problems was the struggling native bee populations. This interested me because in my five years of living here I had only seen about a dozen native bees, and after asking some classmates I learned that some had never even seen them at all! Later that I night I went on the internet and looked at university websites to see if there was anything about native bees and sure enough I discovered that their populations were dwindling. I wanted to help but it seemed impossible until I had the opportunity to get in the competition presented by EarthEcho International to help local biodiversity.
The Planning Process
The Planning Process
Once I got the go ahead from the school to start making my project idea a reality, I met with the Save the Bees club at the high school to coordinate my plants with their garden, in order to attract the most bees and further the habitat restoration work.
Then I connected with Growing Works Nursery where they generously donated hundreds of dollars of bee attracting native plants for the garden. We filled our truck with nearly 100 native plants and then came the hard part- getting them into the ground!
Planting the Garden
Planting the Garden
We spent a full backbreaking day breaking up the hard rocky soil and getting the plants in. I learned that figuring out the spacing on the plants is really complicated when the plants are so small right now but can grow to be up to 12 feet tall! This will definitely be a long term project and needs a lot of patience! We put a bunch of the plants in the garden perimeter, in between the fruit trees and along the sides.
Nests and Data
Nests and Data
Next we set up two bumblebee nests, in the hopes that the bumblebees would make their homes in them. Bumblebees tend to be solitary and don't swarm or build hives, so hopefully the terra cotta pot nests will get them to make their homes in our garden! We also set up 4 camera traps to collect footage of the bees in the garden. We check the footage regularly to count how many bees we see on the plants and using the nests.
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