ICT Bee Fest

Please park in the Exploration Place parking lot. Those looking for accessible handicapped parking (and our vendors) may use the Mid-America All-Indian Museum parking lot.

Free public transportation is also available. From 10am – 1pm you can park at Exploration Place, Old Cowtown Museum, or the Wichita Art Museum and get a free ride to the Indian Museum on the Q-Line. Plan to leave bee fest about 20 minutes before the end of the event so you don’t miss your ride back, as the stops are every 15-20 minutes.

Thank you Wichita Transit!

BIG NEWS: the Q-Line will be following their extended Museum Route throughout ICT Bee Fest this year! From 10am – 1pm you can park at Exploration Place, Old Cowtown Museum, or the Wichita Art Museum and get a free ride to the Indian Museum where the bees and butterflies await. Plan to leave about 20 minutes before the end of the event so you don’t miss your ride back as the stops are every 15-20 minutes.

With this ride option now available, we ask that the Indian Museum parking lot be utilized for handicapped parking only. If you don’t want to wait for The Q, you can still park at Exploration Place and take a short walk across the bridge and enter through the back gate of the Indian Museum.

You can also utilize the public busses all day for $5 and park wherever you like and catch a ride to Central and Nims. Day passes can be purchased on the bus (exact cash only) or in advance at the Transit Center or Dillons.

Thank you Wichita Transit for helping to make our event more accessible!

A water fountain and bathrooms are located in the lobby, near the main museum entrance.

Vendors will also have food and beverages for sale during the event, including Indian Tacos hosted by the Museum’s Board of Trustees.

Bee City Wichita is an initiative that focuses on native plants and wildlife. European Honeybees are an introduced species, so they are not the highlight of this event. This small difference is part of what makes ICT Bee Fest unique!

Honeybees and beekeeping are important to agriculture in our community, but so are native pollinators. If we lose native pollinators, we’ll see major ecological consequences across our beloved landscape. It is more important than ever to put attention toward their conservation, and they are often overlooked.

Yes! The Eastern Bumblebees at ICT Bee Fest are 100% male bumblebees, which do not have stingers. Only female bees have stingers!

Our supplier hand-selects the male bumblebees for us, and after the event the boys live out the rest of their short lives providing pollination work to the Riverside Community Garden by Botanica.

A huge thank you to Koppert, our bumblebee supplier. Although Koppert has ceased production of research and education hives, management has carved out a personal exception for us and is continuing to provide bumblebees to ICT Bee Fest out of support for our educational work.

Wichita is the first Bee City USA affiliate in Kansas (became an affiliate Feb 7, 2023), but it’s a nation-wide movement organized by the Xerces Society.

We create and restore pollinator habitat, encourage pollinator-friendly practices in the city, and raise awareness of how important native pollinators are. Grassland Groupies is the organizing NGO behind the initiative.

Current public garden projects include:

• Pawnee Prairie Park
• Central Riverside Park (Kansas Wildlife Exhibit),
• Riverside Community Garden (near Botanica)
• Evergreen Library and Community Center
• Earhart Elementary

Bee City Wichita will also be leading a unique prairie restoration project right here in the heart of downtown Wichita that will begin in 2026.

Learn more at our Bee City Wichita page.

Volunteer opportunities are generally communicated through our newsletter, so I encourage you to sign up to receive updates.

We also encourage everyone to start native gardens in their own yards. Even a small space can make a big difference. Stop by the Ask-an-Expert and Garden Certification Booth to find out how you can create a Certified Pollinator Habitat at home!

This event was put together by Grassland Groupies and The Bee City Wichita Committee,  with cooperation from the City of Wichita. 

• Grassland Groupies is a local nonprofit dedicated to environmental education and conservation of grasslands founded in 2021. 
• The Bee City Wichita Committee meets monthly throughout the year at the Advanced Learning Library, meetings are open to the public. Sign up for updates!