Brittany Woods Middle School Buzzes as Students Learn Beekeeping
By NANCY CAMBRIA
Director of Communications
The forecast predicted a storm coming. The day was already throwing off a lot of humidity. Time was limited before the weather rolled in, but it was also time to tend to Barry and Jerry.
The Brittany Woods Middle School seventh-graders were ready for the job on this steamy May afternoon. Like astronauts, the trio stepped foot-first into their heavy white protective suits, a U.S. flag on the upper right arm of each. It was best to wear their suits baggy, advised the students, because it provides better protection and ventilation.
It was also time for the three adults in training to don their suits. Unlike the students, they were rookies on this mission.
At just past 2:15 p.m. the students embarked from their basement classroom toward the Urban Bird Corridor, a wooded path and wetland that runs between Brittany Woods and the Ruth Park Golf Course. The adults trailed behind. White hoods and veils now firmly on their heads, they went down a narrow path, climbed a small berm, and arrived at their destination. What the students heard was no surprise given the uncertain weather: Barry and Jerry were buzzing.
These pioneering students, Lila Stewart, Bella Lombardo and Grayson Nagy, were becoming highly capable trained beekeepers learning to tend to the middle school’s first apiary. Barry and Jerry are the students’ nicknames for the tan and green painted wooden beehives, now the active homes of thousands and thousands of bees, each hive loyal to their own queen.
The hives were named for Barry, the lead character in the animated “Bee Movie,” and Jerry, after the students learned that comedian Jerry Seinfeld produced the movie – though none of them had ever heard of the popular 1990s TV show “Seinfeld.”
Brittany Woods Middle School is one of the few schools in Missouri that now keeps bees as part of its curriculum and everyday school culture. It is also one of just a few schools in the region that further raises free-ranging chickens in its enclosed outdoor courtyard. The animals, both cluckers and buzzers, are all part of the school’s new sustainability initiatives.
Not only do the animals represent various parts of our integrated ecosystem for survival, but a relevant part of the school’s hands-on curriculum and unique opportunities for students. Bees are critically important for pollinating plants and flowers. Our planet cannot survive without them. But their colonies are shrinking worldwide. Cummings said the students' interactions with the bees and their continued care and observation of their behaviors are all part of learning how the greater world works together to sustain itself.
Brittany Woods Middle School is one of the few schools in Missouri that now keeps bees as part of its curriculum and everyday school culture.
It is also one of just a few schools in the region that further raises free-ranging chickens in its enclosed outdoor courtyard.
The animals, both cluckers and buzzers, are all part of the school’s new sustainability initiatives.
As the bees buzzed, Lila and Bella entered the apiary and began their work, slowly lifting the wooden lid off the first hive with their heavily padded gloves. Bees immediately started darting out in swirling patterns around their bulky suits. It was up to Lila to pump the tin smoker. Smoke makes it harder for the bees to smell pheromones and calms them down. Outside the aviary’s fenced area, Grayson took detailed notes on a clipboard recording the bees behavior and the health of the hive.
Some of the bees began clinging to the students’ protective suits and screened face masks. Unfazed, they noticed several ants on the edge of the hive and asked the observer to make note of a possible, but not highly concerning, threat.
They continued by lifting out one of 10 hanging frames inside the deep hive box , each swarmed in a thick coat of worker bees clinging to a growing mass of honeycomb. Yes, they noted, there were varying components of a growing, healthy hive. There were both bee eggs and bee larvae inside the honeycomb in the frame. Some of the larvae inside the honeycomb had already been capped with wax by the worker bees, giving them a safe, contained space to grow and develop into adults. There were also numerous brown patches on the honeycomb indicating the healthy production of honey. It was up to the students at this point to clear the frame of accumulating wax to ensure the continued thrum of a highly productive hive producing both new bees, wax and honey under the rule of its queen.
As the students worked, teachers Audrey Lane, David Gammon, and Reagan Dauve stood outside the fenced apiary in their suits and observed the students. They, too, wanted to learn beekeeping. They were joined by Rubina McCadney, BWMS’ “Queen Bee” who shares beekeeping responsiblity with Cummings.
“What’s really amazing here,” Cummings said, “is how the students are really the teachers for the adults. That’s a goal of project-based learning, giving the students the tools and experience to gain authentic expertise.”
Donned in her own protective suit, Cummings watched and coached from outside the apiary.
There’s been just one sting so far – and that was when Cummings and McCadney were transporting the bees to their new hives. But, just in case, the beekeepers keep an EpiPen in a special safety bag nearby whenever they check the hives. That protects anyone who is stung who may have an allergic reaction.
Altogether it took about 40 minutes to inspect both hives, and most importantly, ensure that the queens had not abandoned their workers – which could lead to a collapse of the colony. But the queens were doing just fine with their minions.
Though the hive is a safe distance away from the middle school, it’s close enough for the worker bees to pollinate the blooms in the Giving Garden inside the school’s courtyard. That’s where students have been tending vegetables and berries, not to mention 18 new chickens who like to roost in the courtyard trees and peck in the grass with students nearby.
When the bees return to their hives from the garden and surrounding woods, they bring with them small sacs of pollen and nectar from the blooms. These provide protein and energy for bees, eggs and larvae, and the key material to spark the chemical reaction that produces the sweet, golden prize: pure honey. The students said they are optimistic the hives will soon yield enough honey that they can scrape, drip and collect off the frames. But they have yet to decide what to do with the liquid gold. It could be sold as a special brand of Brittany Woods honey. Or, they could use the wax and honey in the production of soaps and candles. It will be up to them to decide.
Just like the Giving Garden, the aviary remains a marvelous example to both students and staff of how humans are interdependent with nature. Humans cannot survive without bees that have the herculean task of pollinating plants that provide the food we live on, the medicines we need and the materials to build our homes and create our everyday items. And, yet, the bees will not survive without the profound work of human beings to preserve and conserve the planet through sustainability.
As the storm moved closer, the students returned the lid to the second hive. They gently shook their arms and legs to shoo away the bees still clinging to their suits, and then headed back inside. The school buses were coming to take them home for dinner and homework. The bees, on instinct, swirled back to their hives. It was time to get back to work, and away from the approaching storm.