Giving back with the bee cause

In 2017 we began working with The Bee Cause, a national nonprofit that places beehives in schools throughout the country. We love bees, and recognize that pollinators play a critical role in our environment. We wanted to spread the word about these incredible and important pollinators, and The Bee Cause made perfect sense to support.

The Bee Cause provides young people with opportunities to understand, engage, and learn from honey bees — connecting with the natural environment and fostering important STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) skills in the process. This week, as we celebrate National Pollinator Week, we’ve decided to donate 5 percent of all sales to The Bee Cause. This applies to orders made from June 18 through June 22. This donation will allow us to sponsor the installation of a beehive for one New England school that’s been on The Bee Cause’s waitlist.

Our first Bee Cause-sponsored hive went into a middle school in Ripton, Vt., last year, and we followed up with a hive donation to an elementary school in Cornwall, Vt., this spring. Last month we headed to Cornwall’s Bingham Memorial School — an elementary school about a half hour away from Bee’s Wrap HQ — to watch Principal Jen Kravitz move a “nuc” — the nucleus containing a queen bee and her attendants — into their new home.

Cornwall second and third graders watched from a safe distance as Principal Kravitz removed the nuc — five healthy frames containing the bees — and placed the nuc into the house. “It’s a tenuous but exciting moment for a new hive,” explained Kat Clear, our Bee’s Wrap sales representative and resident beekeeper. “Once the queen is safely in place in her colony, the hive can grow and proliferate.”

“It’s like moving from an apartment to a four-bedroom house,” said Kat. “You really need to get them into their new mansion and say, ‘Have fun, put a rug down where you want.’”

The students got a chance to handle some of Kravitz’s hive tools, like her bee brush and smoker. They’d also spent the weeks leading up to the hive’s installation learning about bees and pollination, building flowers out of pipe cleaners and talking about the transfer of pollen. This is the kind of hands-on learning that moves from the classroom into the great outdoors that The Bee Cause hopes to foster, and that we’re so glad to support.

We’re particularly excited to see children embrace bees, recognizing the vital role that bees and other pollinators play in our natural environment; we hope that by instilling a love of pollinators in our youngest neighbors, we can protect this vital — but vulnerable — group for decades to come.