There’s a buzz in Nate Howett’s classroom at Edgewood Middle School and it isn’t a spelling bee. Thanks to a Red Apple grant from the Warsaw Education Foundation, there’s a beehive in the science room. Howett estimates the swarm started out at about 4 pounds, or 15,000 bees. Howett received the grant for his classroom project, “Bee”ing Observed, in January. He said he wanted his students to take a look at an indoor beehive, so he applied for the grant. The hive itself was made in Maine, and Howett had to put the bees in. Dan Ousley, owner of Outdoor Living Center, donated the swarm. The bees were added to the hive on Memorial Day. “There’s a tube that goes outside. It’s a feral hive and self-sustaining,” Howett said. It’s also safe, he guaranteed. Edgewood teacher Sherri Johnson’s art students made the covers for the hive. Bees don’t work in light so Howett uses them to keep the hive covered during the day. Students in his classroom use the beehive to learn about the scientific method. They learn to observe, and they talk about what they notice. They can witness the effect cold weather has on the bees versus warm weather. “We looked at it yesterday and talked about what’s going on. (A bee) population doubles in warmer weather,” Howett said. If a bee population gets too big, some of the bees will swarm off. “Usually with this type, you don’t have that. They produce just enough for the hive.” The case hosting the hive is two-sided. Once in a while, the queen bee will come out, he said, but she’s usually surrounded by the worker bees pretty well. The summer is the best time to see her. “At first it was kind of weird because I never saw a beehive in the classroom before. But then I got used to it and it looks kind of cool, from far away,” seventh-grader Alex McNulty said. Logan Selders, seventh-grader, stated, “I thought it was pretty cool because I never saw a beehive in the classroom before. I was kind of wondering how they got the bees in there.” As for what they learned from the beehive, Selders said, “I didn’t know how much larvae they produced. It turned out they make a lot of babies and I didn’t know about that.” McNulty added, “I didn’t know how many bees swarmed at one time.” Both students said they have come to appreciate bees and how important they are to the environment. “I do because they help pollinate plants and without them there wouldn’t be a lot of trees and other plants,” Selders said.
