Wild bees and biodiversity I

The Märkische Schweiz Nature Park 40 km east of Berlin offers a unique natural and cultural landscape as well as the backdrop for our project in and around the "Drei Eichen" environmental education centre. By cooperating with the nature park administration, we will not only get to know the nature park and its surroundings, but also actively help to shape it. We are offering this work camp because it is fun to have young people from all over the world with us and because we simply need many hands for some of the work! People and pets live on the grounds of the Drei Eichen environmental education centre - and there are almost always lots of guests: children, families, seminar groups. At the moment, we also want to reintroduce wild honey bees, which originally lived in caves in old trees, to our nature park. To do this, we are building hollows in tree trunks. You help us with this. You will learn about the types of beehives and how the bees are observed and cared for. This ancient art of beekeeping is called Zeidlerei. For activities in between, Drei Eichen with its grounds offers many opportunities to learn about plants and animals, nature conservation and alternative ways of life and to actively participate. On some days, you will "give something back" to Drei Eichen by helping out on the farm - because sometimes we need many hands: e.g. for wood protection paint on the playground, repair work, clearing the small pond of plant debris and cleaning up the garden. At various locations in the Märkische Schweiz Nature Park, we will spend a few days helping to carry out various landscape conservation tasks in different natural areas. The aim is to protect or promote either dry or wet sites, their soil and the native plants that grow there. Historically, these sites were created and maintained through a lot of manual labour - seasonal mowing and grazing by sheep and goats. Today, we help with this. There are many lakes that invite you to take a refreshing dip after work! All work, whether in landscape conservation, manual labour or creative design, takes place outdoors. We plan together on site, depending on the current weather conditions, on which days we do which work and which days we take off.