Individualized Learning Stories
Creating a Buzz
Hava Blair '13
There’s a new buzz on campus — literally — and it is music to Hava Blair’s ears.
It’s the sound of more than 200,000 European honeybees happily making honey under the watchful eye of Blair ’13, Lawrence University’s first-ever beekeeper.
The duties are an extension of her role as manager of the Sustainable Lawrence University Garden (SLUG), one of the features that attracted her to Lawrence. The junior geology major from Jefferson got involved with SLUG shortly after arriving as a freshman.
“I’m surprised at what a big part of my life working in the garden is” said Blair, who worked on a community supported agriculture (CSA) farm in high school. “It’s a totally different experience than my academic experience at Lawrence. I love the academic environment, but SLUG is remarkable because it’s so action oriented.
“I came to Lawrence thinking I would become a theatre arts major,” Blair added, “the beekeeping is just a recent development. I love to study geology but I have numerous interests and this is one of them. Without the diversity of things I’m doing, I think I would be absolutely bored.”
A bee neophyte, Blair, along with eight other students involved in SLUG, received her beekeeping baptism through a night class at Fox Valley Technical College she took earlier this year.
“It’s a fun learning experience. I really love it,” Blair said of her beekeeping duties. “It also has generated a lot of interest from people in the community. We’re hoping to bring in a lot of individuals for workshops and make this an educational experience.”
Housed behind a wooden fence in five “hives” near Hiett Hall, an initial shipment of 70,000 bees arrived in early June from California. They were acquired primarily to educate the campus about bees, but Lawrence also is reaping the benefits of their honey producing and pollination skills, both for SLUG and an orchard of young fruit trees that students planted on campus in 2010. Bees typically pollinate over a two-mile radius.
Establishing a bee colony is illegal in most urban settings, Appleton included. Getting one started on campus required careful navigation of the complicated waters of local politics with a persuasive education campaign. Led by Oren Jakobson ’11, Lawrence eventually received its bee blessing from the local Board of Health.
Blair is looking forward to things getting “sticky” this fall when she harvests the fruits of the bees’ labor.
“I’m planning to collect the honey the first week of September. I’m excited. When these hives are in full production next year, we’ll probably get about 250 pounds of honey off of them. That’s a lot of honey.”
The collected honey will be sold to Bon Appetit for use in the Warch Center dining facilities.
