Bees and a Pollinator Garden Coming to Campus
Source/Author: Natalye Horne, Second Grade Teacher
October 03, 2019
The second grade classes are excited to announce they are getting a beehive on campus! One of second grade’s main units of study is the life cycle of plants. With that, students do a deep dive into pollinators like bees and butterflies. They’ve learned how much bees do for people, including that bees are responsible for about 1/3 of the world’s food! However, students also learned that our bee population is decreasing rapidly. Eager to help, our second graders decided to plant a pollinator garden on the Lower School campus and to have a beehive on the back of campus.
To achieve our goals, we have been working closely with Josh Harris, Founder of Queen and Colony and local beekeeper, to create a plan that works best for our students. An enclosure was built on the back side of campus to house the beehive. This enclosure ensures that bees fly up and out of the hive to avoid bumping into people that may be nearby. Plexiglass surrounds the enclosure to allow students to observe the bees and their hive.
With the new beehive on campus, students will be able to keep track of their own bee population and see how the campus pollinator garden impacts those numbers.
