Upper School Farm Ex students have been working with Nick Lodise of Bee Happy Honey & Hives to bring an apiary to our campus. Throughout the past month, Nick has spoken to Farm Ex students and led assemblies with Lower School students about beekeeping and the importance of bees.

Upper School students have been hard at work building the 50 wooden boxes that will house the school’s newest and very productive residents.They also completed 500 frames for honeycombs, and painted and prepped beehive stands. Before spring break, Lower School students joined in on the thrilling preparations by painting all of the bee boxes with beautiful designs.

Then, finally over spring break, it was time to bring in the bees! Students, supervised by Nick, suited up to help get the bees into the hive. Willa Hollinger ’23, Sophia Wang ’24, Kathy Liang ’21 and Sara Ni ’21 came out to transfer an estimated 30,000-40,000 bees into our school’s very first hive!

Work will continue to maintain the bees throughout the spring. This coming weekend the students will have a chance to open up the hive to study the insects and the health of the hive. The bees will be receiving pollen pads (for brood production) and sugar water. Stay tuned for more news about the AFS apiary!