Bumblebee Conservation Trust

Over the past century, our bumblebee populations have crashed; two species have become nationally extinct, and several others have declined dramatically.

The Bumblebee Conservation Trust was established to educate people about the serious concerns about the ‘plight of the bumblebee’. 

It’s no surprise that the Bumblebee Conservation Trust are working hard to make their vision of “creating a world where bumblebees are thriving and valued,” a reality,  because the beloved bumblebee pollinates our crops and wildflowers. 

They have a growing number of committed supporters that are helping their team of staff make a huge difference, but they wanted to reach even more people to tell the story of how bumblebee queens find their nests.

The Bumblebee Conservation Trust came to the Wizards after seeing our animated explainer for Plant Life, another video in which bees are the main character. They realised that it would be the perfect way to tell the story of how bumblebee queens find their homes. 

Their main target audience were urban and suburban homeowners who care about the environment but don’t know how to create bee spaces, and the general public who are specifically searching for bee information – This gave the Wizards a really clear picture of the kind of environment we would be building this important story in. 

It was also clear that the Bumblebee Conservation Trust wanted to share scientifically correct information and show the bumblebees in an illustrative but anatomically correct way, which was music to the ears of our lead animator, who loves to animate all creatures great and small. 

The discovery session was packed full of useful information that the Bumblebee Conservation Trust needed their supporters to know; it was amazing learning about bumblebees, such as how they create nests and all the work that goes into making sure that there is another generation of bumblebees. 

We all knew about the devastating effects that losing the bumblebees could have, but we didn’t know how much work the queen bumblebee has to do to find the perfect nest or how changes in people’s gardens over the years have dramatically limited the bumblebee’s options. 

This brilliant discovery session, in which we learned so much, left us with a million ideas for how to begin bringing this animation to life!

After learning everything we needed to know during the discovery session, we could now concentrate on turning this information into an engaging story that would capture the audience’s attention and encourage them to do more for the bumblebee queens.  

These types of tales are our favourites to tell because, by turning complex concepts into comprehensible animations, they come to life. 

We knew the main objective would be to show people the simplest ways in which they can create a more bee-friendly garden, with dedicated areas in which the queen bumblebee could make a nest. 

This script had to be fact checked by the Bumblebee Conservation Trust’s own scientists – We had to carefully read through all of the documents and information they had provided to ensure we didn’t miss anything important.

The Bumblebee Conservation Trust approved the script after a little tweaking and a lot of learning about bumblebees. They loved the attention to detail and how the team had managed to make the journey of the bumblebee queen both inspiring and as close to real life as possible. 

 Now it was time to start bringing our little bumblebee queen to life! 

There was a lot to consider during this stage, such as:

🐝 The three different kinds of bumblebees 

🐝 The types of British flowers we would need to include 

🐝 The differences between an urban garden and a wilder garden 

We knew that these would be the three most important parts of the animation and the designs that would be under the most scrutiny by the team at the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, particularly regarding their anatomical accuracy. 

So we weren’t surprised when there were some tweaks to how the bumblebees looked – The scientists were focusing on the smallest details like fluffiness and how little the bumblebee’s legs should be, whereas the marketing manager was making sure the animation would work as a whole. 

This worked wonderfully through the process and kept the project ticking along quite nicely, which meant we were starting to work through the storyboard in no time.

The Bumblebee Conservation Trust team was blown away when they got to see the entire animation laid out in front of them. 

Although most people seem to want to skip this stage, the Wizards are aware that it is the one where we receive the most changes and we already know that changing a storyboard will be quicker than changing the animation. 

Thankfully, the Bumblebee Conservation Trust had followed the process, and by this stage, we were happy with the progress that had been made to bring this story to life, so we quickly moved onto the production stage.

Our animation Wizard, Gareth, loved bringing these brilliant bumblebee queens to life; having made the decision between animation and zoology, we knew this would be the perfect project for him. 

He also employed some unique techniques while creating this animation, enabling us to provide the client with exactly what they requested without jeopardising the project’s budget or deadline. 

When you are working with a not-for-profit like the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, counting on their animation to help save more bumblebees than ever is really of the utmost importance! 

This is a project where our process really shined, meaning that we were able to deliver this perfect project on budget and before the deadline –  The whole team (even the scientists) loved the final outcome. 

We have never learned so much working on a project and will probably think about this video and the Bumblebee Conservation Trust every time we see a big, fluffy bumblebee. 

Which is exactly what we want everyone else who watches it to do as well. We hope that it brings more and more people to the Bumblebee Conservation Trust’s website, as well as engaging people across social media, to ensure that bumblebees will be around long after we are gone. 

The Wizards were so pleased to see the video going live across social media, it was great to read the comments from their audience and the overwhelming positive response really did put a smile of our faces, especially when you imagine all those new nesting sites that might be created for the next generation of bumblebees! #beethechange