#beekepping

ABI REIMOLD:

On Saturday I volunteered with the Philadelphia Beekeepers’ guild. I was really curious about urban beekeeping, so I went to their website to contact someone from the group for my essay and saw that they were having an event and needed volunteers for Saturday so I signed up.

The guild was running a information table as part of the science festival held at Bartram’s garden. I went at 10 and helped Suzane, the president, set up the table. When Suzanne travels, she collects honey from everywhere that she goes, so we put out honeys from down south and out west and even from Mexico. We put little signs that said where the honeys were from or what flowers they came from. My favorite ones were the cactus flowers, which was a spicy flavored honey, and the Queen Anne’s honey, which tasted like caramel. I didn’t know honeys could taste so many different ways!

Suzanne told me a few basics about bees and then she said “I’ll be right back,” and disapeared for what felt like half an hour. Families started going by and asking me questions about bees since I was standing at the table. It was kind of stressful and uncomfortable-- these people are looking at me like some kind of bee authority but I’m just as new to this as they are! I tried my best to answer their questions and finally Suzanne came back and the real expert took care of the harder questions.

The Guild is awesome for the community because it’s a support group for people who want to start a hive but don’t know how to. The Guild has all the resources a person who is thinking about keeping bees needs to get off the ground. Bees are obviously important because they are crucial to ecosystems, so the work that The Guild does is really awesome.

Suzanne told me about one community of beekeepers in Plymouth that faced adversity when a woman started a campaign against beekeeping. She claimed that bees injure children and went around raising a hoopla to ban bees in the area. Beekeepers in Plymouth banded with other local beekeeping guilds to try to stop this.

Overall I’m really glad I got to go. This is what I was most interested in and am writing my paper about. I was really surprised as to how chill it was. Beekeeping is obviously a commitment, but it’s not the hugest commitment. It’s an awesome way to support to ecosystem of your neighborhood. Once I get settled down more in life, I would love to have a hive.