Sweet Honey at Last

At long last, in late autumn,  upper school students saw the fruits of laboring over and tending to the bee hives in GA's apiary. Located on the Green Roof, The Apiary has been a focal point of our nature program since the since students took residence in the new buildings in 2011. Lily Horner GA class of 2015 reflects upon her work as an emerging Beekeeper.

"I had been in Apiary Club for a year and a half before we harvested any honey. After waiting that long and doing a lot of work, I felt that extracting honey was the apex of my “career” as a beekeeper. Since Apiary Club isn’t a club that meets during the rotation or has any specific meeting times, I was worried that no one would come to be apart of this historic moment, but thankfully five people came (a huge draw for such a small club), and we all worked hard and had fun collecting the honey. We had some difficulty getting the equipment to work according to the directions at first, but once we started going with the extractor we didn’t stop. Taking turns to spin the handle and hold the extractor so that it didn’t fall off the table, we all were involved in the extraction process. No one stood idly by while one person did the work, nor did all of the students sit and watch while the teachers did the actual work. When you think of beekeeping, you think of one person standing around a swarm of bees, but in actuality beekeeping at GA has been a great communal experience, and it has taught me about collaboration and giving back to the environment."