"In the past decade, bees have been disappearing at an alarming rate – a combination of pests, pesticides and the destruction of habitats has seen the UK population, alone, decrease by approximately 33%. In September 2017, seven types of bees have been added to the list of endangered species for the first time. The consequences of losing them would be huge: Albert Einstein once said that humans “would not survive the honeybees’ disappearance for more than five years.” It is within this context that the project MELISSA was initiated. In Greek mythology MELISSA was a nymph who discovered and taught the use of honey.MELISSA proposes to raise the profile of the environmental importance of bees locally, nationally and internationally; uniquely to this project, it will also research and demonstrate the importance of bee-keeping both historically and culturally, within an international context. The project will involve pupils aged 7-15 from schools, geographically spanning the whole of Europe: from Perth, Scotland, in the North; Thessaloniki, Greece in the South; Voru, Estonia in the East; Angra do Heroismo, Azores, Portugal in the West and Verbania-Pallanza, Italy, central. These schools have been carefully selected as they each offer unique skills and experience which they will bring to the project. The project will be based around clearly defined, cross-curricular, transnational tasks, each with a specific, measurable outcome. It has at its heart the desire to ensure that pupils leave school environmentally aware, qualified, skilled, optimistic and enthusiastic about their role as a European citizen. It proposes to foster understanding of bees whilst offering the opportunity for entrepreneurship from an early age. It aims to inspire young people, to build on their sense of initiative and to show them that, through team work, cooperation, hard work and good leadership, they can create new resources, overcome challenges and become successful ambassadors for bee-keeping. Through participating in this project, pupils will work towards becoming successful learners as they will need to be part of a team, as well as taking on leadership roles. They will strive to be responsible citizens as questions around the environment and the importance of bees to human life will be researched. This project will assist them in becoming confident contributors, as all pupils will be required to present their work, in different languages, at all stages of their project, discuss their rationale, travel and meet fellow pupils from different countries, and share what they have learnt from these experiences back home. This project will result in the production of meaningful, multi-lingual, 'case-study' style, practical, innovative educational resources, lesson plans and risk assessments which can be used by other schools and organisations wishing to initiate similar projects. These resources will be used to promote bee keeping and will also explain the importance of bees in our environmental and cultural domain. It will offer the opportunity for pupils to research the importance of bees within our diverse cultures. Identifying the differences and similarities among our partnership. It will raise awareness of the importance of bees to human life. It will offer hands-on experience in bee-keeping within an educational set-up and will generate innovative education resources to support this, thus strengthening the profiles of teaching professionals. This is a multi-lingual, cross curricular project which will develop and hone basic skills as well as provide the opportunity to gain new and exciting skills which will remain with participants as they progress through their education into the workplace. These skills will be shared with other schools both nationally and internationally. The entrepreneurial spirit of young people will be fostered by way of a final ""Bee Fayre"" where pupils will present the outcomes of the project and market their bee-related products. This project will use the context of learning about the nature of bees to explore cross-curricular, multi-lingual education, communicating at its core, the importance of bees to human life. The impact of bees on our culture, literature, arts and music, the history and styles of bee-keeping will be explored, alongside the life of bees, how they make honey, the relationship between humans and bees, how to become a bee-keeper, and the commercial/health products derived from bees. Many longer term, sustainable benefits from this project are anticipated: having established our schools as bee-keeping schools we will become an attraction and a source of knowledge from which other schools and community groups can benefit. Hence the production of a guide to bee-keeping for primary schools/community groups is an essential outcome of this project."