Australian bees will be on the agenda for a community group talk this week, with a well-known nature educator set to be on hand to deliver the talk.
Along with their Annual General meeting, Friends of Sassafras Creek (FOSC) are hosting a community talk, ‘Discover your Native Bees’, on Thursday 6 November.
From 7pm to 8.30pm in Monbulk, the community are invited to the free and informative session with Nature Educator Clancy Lester, who is the founder of Bees and Blossoms and also teaches people how to create native bee hotels from recycled and sustainable materials.
A University of Melbourne graduate, Clancy is passionate about biodiversity, sustainability, and finding hopeful ways to act on climate and is also looking forward to sharing all things bee-related.
With over 2000 species of native bees across Australia, Clancy said his talk will hone in on some information about some of the more local ones, like reed bees, which nest in plants like ferns, found across the Dandenong Ranges.
“The bees build like a little apartment complex on the inside of the fern,” he said.
“We will also chat things around the best native plants that we can plant for our native pollinators, like our butterflies and our native bees.”
Commonly known as ‘The Bee Man’, Clancy said that he came to specialise in Australian bees after doing some research in the Northern Territory on stingless bees, which was where he fell in love with native bees as a whole.
“Nobody knows much about native bees and how they’re really in facing some trouble, they’re not getting much help from policy, research or funding either,” he said.
Active in social media spaces, the nature educator has so far had some success getting the word out on native bees and bee hotels.
“I decided to really try and put the word out there, and the social media side of things has taken off a bit,” he said.
Looking forward to hosting CLancy at their AGM, FOSC is a group of dedicated community volunteers who have been working to protect Sassafras Creek since 1990.
The group meet regularly for working bees to maintain and restore habitat in the creek area. Anyone interested in joining FOSC or who has a question about weeds in their garden is invited to pop along next week or for any working bees and meetings in the future.
The evening should ‘bee’ a beautiful chance to learn more about local nature and connect with others and starts at 7pm Thursday 6 November at the Monbulk Living and Learning Centre, 21 Main Rd, Monbulk.
Please RSVP if you are coming at:
https://events.humanitix.com/fosc-community-talk
