Canada Agriculture Museum Introduces
Live Bee Colony

For immediate release
May 5, 2010

Ottawa—May 5, 2010—The Canada Agriculture Museum celebrates the official opening of its newest exhibition Taking Care of Beesness this Mother’s Day, Sunday, May 9, with the addition of a live bee hive.

The exhibition Taking Care of Beesness demonstrates the important role that bees play in pollination and informs visitors as to how beekeeping is essential to the production of numerous Canadian crops, as well as to the production of honey and many other by-products.

The addition of a live hive to the Canada Agriculture Museum is creating quite a buzz. Providing visitors with a unique opportunity to observe a bee colony in action, the enclosed hive will include thousands of bees in addition to the queen bee.

“As a Museum, we have a vision of inspiring all Canadians to engage with their agricultural past, present and future,” says Kerry-Leigh Burchill, Director General of the Canada Agriculture Museum. “We do this through compelling and rich experiences, such as the observation hive in the new Taking Care of Beesness exhibition.”

To connect urban visitors with the farms that feed them, museum interpreters offer interactive and tactile learning demonstrations on the different livestock, crops, and techniques used in agriculture. Through engaging exhibition components such as the live hive, visitors can explore the connections between science and technology and society.

“The Canada Agriculture Museum is committed to creating new ways of sharing knowledge and artifacts with our visitors,” says Kerry-Leigh Burchill. “Educational programs and demonstrations will encourage visitors to better understand bees, beekeeping technology and the necessity of proper pollination for Canadian agriculture. Up to one third of everything we eat is dependent on pollination—which means that healthy honeybees and beekeeping are an important issue for all of us.”

The Museum is hosting a public event to welcome the Queen Bee. Bring your mother to the Canada Agriculture Museum on Sunday, May 9, where she will be given the royal treatment while enjoying special activities fit for a queen. On Mother’s Day, learn about a mother’s role on the farm and how mother animals produce many of the things we eat everyday such as milk, eggs, and meat. For this special day, mothers and grandmothers have free admission to the Museum.

Extend your visit online with Bees: A Honey of an Idea, a virtual exhibition exploring the essential role bees play in the pollination of many Canadian food crops. This online exhibition was developed in partnership with the Virtual Museum of Canada (VMC) at virtualmuseum.ca, an initiative of the Department of Canadian Heritage, as well as in partnership with the Canadian Honey Council. See it at: http://agriculture.technomuses.ca/english/bees/default.php

The Canada Agriculture Museum is a national institution, one of three museums within the Canada Science and Technology Museum Corporation in Ottawa. The Museum is a unique facility combining a demonstration farm located in the heart of the nation’s capital with the highest calibre of exhibitions and interpretation. The Museum’s facilities are located on the Central Experimental Farm: a national historic site which continues to carry out agricultural research and policy under Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. The Corporation and its three Museums—the Canada Agriculture Museum, the Canada Aviation Museum, and the Canada Science and Technology Museum—tell the stories of Canadian ingenuity and achievement in science and technology, and demonstrate how these accomplishments have contributed to the building of our country.

For more information, please visit agriculture.technomuses.ca or call 613-991-3053

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Media contact:

Caroline Desabrais
613-998-5342
cdesabrais@technomuses.ca

Media Availability

Members of the media are invited to explore Taking Care of Beesness and meet the project manager, curator, and interpretive staff for this exhibition.

When:

Thursday, May 6, 2010
10–11 a.m.

Where:

Canada Agriculture Museum
Prince of Wales Drive