"Buzz Alley" exhibit under construction. Photo courtesy of Creative Discovery Museum.

Creative Discovery Museum is swarming with excitement to introduce Buzz Alley, the newest of its permanent exhibits, July 29, 2011. The new exhibit is just one component of a project shared between Creative Discovery Museum, Chattanooga Nature Center, Hamilton County Department of Education and the ad hoc Friends of William’s Wildflowers Committee. Components of the collaboration include the Museum’s exhibit, a book, curriculum and a nature tour. The Lyndhurst Foundation and Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga are major funders of this collaborative project.

“We are pleased to be a partner in the Bee and wildflower project with the Chattanooga Nature Center and the Friends of William’s Wildflowers,” notes Henry Schulson, Executive Director of Creative Discovery Museum. “William Crutchfield’s beautiful illustrations and the William’s Wildflowers book provide a wonderful complement to our new exhibit. We hope all children will visit Buzz Alley and then be inspired to go outdoors and discover the incredible natural treasures throughout our region.”

It is expected that over 200,000 children and adults will view the exhibit at the Museum annually. Another 1,000 students will receive theWilliam’s Wildflowers book and curriculum each year. Two hundred of these students will also participate in a tour at the Chattanooga Nature Center.

The Exhibit

The Buzz Alley exhibit invites guests to explore the critical role of the honeybee as pollinators and the importance of beekeeping in helping to sustain healthy bee hives. It will also highlight the unique relationship between bees and wildflowers.

Creative Discovery Museum chose to create the bee exhibit because there is a critical need for children and their families to have a better understanding of the important role bees fill in our environment and crop production. Bee colonies are suffering from colony collapse disorder, and decreasing quality food sources, such as wildflowers. This exhibit will explore bees and wildflowers as a way to spark children’s and families’ interest in the environment in their own backyards.

Inside the exhibit, children will learn the important role honeybees play as pollinators of different types of plants, especially food crops and wildflowers. Children may also pretend to be a beekeeper and learn how beekeeping supports the health of the honeybee hives. The beekeeping area has graphics explaining beekeeping and a cabinet that houses tools such as a smoker, brush and feeder.

Three live hives on the Museum’s Green Roof are visible from Buzz Alley. Guided by educational signage, guests may see first hand the differences of the different types of hives used in large production as well as hobby beekeeping. The Museum has had an observation hive since 1998. Within the observation hive, children can clearly see the bees working, dancing and creating the combs formed for honey.

The new exhibit will introduce the distinctive roles, as well as, the social behaviors that honeybees have within their hive. Kids may dress up as bees and act out the duties of the worker, drone and queen. An oversized hive mirroring the frame of the Langstroth hive will feature areas that show the three stages of bee development – egg, larva and pupa.

Two eye-catching video kiosks provide detailed information about the bee’s social behavior, such as the challenges faced by a honeybee, what happens inside a real hive, and the bee dance. The three dances – waggle, round and sickle – which bees use to communicate the location of pollen sources to each other, are also displayed so kids may try some of the bees fancy footwork.

The Book

In addition to the exhibit, the collaboration includes the publication of William’s Wildflowers and development of school curriculum and a nature tour that corresponds to the book.

Written for students in grades 3 – 6, the book is based on the beautiful watercolor paintings by the late William Crutchfield, a local architect and artist. Crutchfield began his color studies of wildflowers during the Great Depression. Tennessee has the largest variety of wildflowers of any landlocked state in the nation and Crutchfield completed 460 watercolor paintings of wildflowers in this area before his death in 1956. The Committee for the Publication of William’s Wildflower, a group of local volunteers interested in preserving and distributing the work of artist William Crutchfield, led the effort to create and publish the book.

The book’s author, Mary Patten Priestley, an environmental educator, conservationist and curator of the Sewanee Herbarium selected paintings of flowers that grow in the Chattanooga area and that children would see in local forests, meadows, roadsides and wetland areas. Featuring a friendly bee as a guide, the book explores these wildflowers and how bees pollinate them.

Colorful, over-sized images of bees and wildflowers inspired by the book’s illustrations greet guests at the entrance of the Buzz Alley exhibit. Additionally, the Museum has developed a temporary exhibit featuring 15 to 20 framed original works of Crutchfield’s watercolors that will be on display for the opening of Buzz Alley. The William’s Wildflowers book is available for purchase in the Museum Shop and in other locations throughout Chattanooga.

The Tour and Curriculum

The Chattanooga Nature Center, in collaboration with the Museum and Hamilton County Department of Education (HCDE), developed curriculum and a nature tour aligned with state science standards and based on the William’s Wildflowers. The tour of the Nature Center features a wildflower scavenger hunt, a pollination relay game and a flower hike. All students who participate in the curriculum will receive a copy ofWilliam’s Wildflowers, an activity guide and complimentary tickets to visit both the Nature Center and the new bee exhibit at the Museum. The curriculum will include a teacher’s guide and an activity book or field guide designed to be used by students and their families in outdoor settings. Students participating in the curriculum would receive a copy of Williams’ Wildflowers, the activity guide and complimentary tickets to visit both the Nature Center and the new bee exhibit at Creative Discovery Museum.