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Hives at Jessamine Career and Technology Center offer lessons, pollination of fruit trees

Learning the A-Bee-C's

May 02, 2012|By Jonathan Kleppinger | jkleppinger@jessaminejournal.com

Photo by Jonathan Kleppinger

Two beehives have sweetened Jessamine County’s implementation of Kentucky’s Farm to School program. The bees will pollinate an orchard of 16 fruit trees that could produce food for school cafeterias by fall 2013.

After approval from the board of education, the bees arrived at their new home behind Jessamine Career and Technology Center in April. Agriculture teacher Matt Simpson says he hopes the apple, pear and peach trees will be in the ground by the end of the school year. The money to purchase the hives and trees came from a Kentucky Department of Agriculture grant.

JCTC agriculture instructors visited the hives last Thursday with Jessamine County resident Larry Blandford, who serves as treasurer of the Bluegrass Beekeepers Association. Blandford helped identify the queen bees and give maintenance guidance.

Cafeterias in Jessamine County currently use lettuce that is grown hydroponically in a greenhouse at West Jessamine High School. Simpson said fruit is the next expansion of the Farm to School program in the county.

“Our hope is that we can raise some apples and do some things that help benefit what we’re doing and provide education,” he said.

Students will have an opportunity to learn hands-on with the bees as they visit the hives and marketing classes consider wax-based products.

“We’ll go out and do lessons with them and talk about the bees,” Simpson said. “They’ll put on the veil; they’ll put on the suit. Students and people in general oftentimes are a little bit ignorant about them because they just don’t know what they are or how they work.”

Signs will be posted to caution anyone near the area about the presence of bees, and students will sign liability forms before visiting the hives.

Simpson said the bees give many students an in-person learning experience they would not have otherwise.

“It’s not something that students can often get to do at home,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of city-dwellers; we’ve got a lot of folks that live in subdivisions, and so it’s important for them to have those hands-on opportunity.”

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