By Anastasia Avvakumova
At the Cortes Island Museum and Archives Society (CIMAS), a current exhibit celebrates bees while the online archives take off in popularity.
The Listening to Bees exhibit opened on World Bee Day, May 20, with a live demonstration of a beehive. The public can catch it at the museum again on Aug. 14 from 10 a.m. to noon. The exhibit includes bee lore, past and present beekeepers’ tools, informative displays showcasing the four native species, a slew of educational videos which can be watched on demand, fascinating bee facts and the work by mycologist Paul Stamets in recovering the health of honeybees through mycelium extracts.
A display showing Paul Stamets’ work on how mycelium extracts can save honeybees. Photo by Anastasia Avvakumova.
The second current exhibit, "That WasThen | This Is Now," is a retrospect of CIMAS in its various iterations since its public inception in 1998.
The online archives have been attracting a lot of digital attention and traffic to the archives room, as well as research requests.
Since starting its summer hours six days a week in June, the museum on Beasley Road, which also functions as a tourist information centre, has seen a lot of visitors, almost entirely from British Columbia. 21 people joined the Gumboot Walk in Manson’s Lagoon on July 10; another is planned for August and one more in September.
Jane Newman has been the managing director for CIMAS since the spring of 2018 and finds great enjoyment in learning about and working with the people and place of Cortes Island.
Listen to CKTZ's interview with Newman about the exhibit below.