Children Learn the lessons of Laudato si’ from beekeeping
By Brenda (Velasco) Mizenko, PA
Never in my life did I imagine I’d ever become a beekeeper. Yet here I was in a full bee suit with honey bees buzzing all around me about to remove frames from their hives.
Thanks to a grant with the South Dakota Honey Bee Educators Cohort, I was able to bring a honeybee program to St. Elizabeth Seton Elementary School in Rapid City, South Dakota, where I teach. With the Black Hills behind our school, we found the perfect location for our apiary. My fifth graders learned about the importance of honey bees to our environment and how bees make their honey.
A colleague, who is an experienced beekeeper, helped me to remove the frames from the hives. Later my students uncapped the honey with a special scraper, spun the frames with a hand cranked extractor, and poured out the raw honey into a filtered honey bucket.
The honey sat in the bucket overnight and the following day, the children poured delicious golden honey into various jars and bottles. All in all, the students poured 112 jars and bottles of “Seton Honey” which they distributed throughout our school district.
It was the perfect lesson in science and sustainability and most importantly, teaching about caring for God’s creation.