The Bee Cause Project: promoting bees in school

Bee Cause Project: promoting bees in school

by LeeAnna Tatum

You can’t have a conversation about bees with longtime beekeeper and founder of Savannah Bee Company, Ted Dennard, without getting caught up in his enthusiasm for the subject matter. Though Ted is clearly passionate about bees, he admits it wasn’t love at first sight (or sting)!

First introduced to beekeeping as a young boy, it was the honey, not the bees, that interested Ted. “I just fell in love with honey and the real honeycombs and all that. But I was terrified of bees,” he confessed, “they were like the ‘necessary evil’ because I didn’t like getting stung.”

Despite his aversion to the bees themselves, Ted continued with his beekeeping through college and it became an integral part of his Peace Corp experience in Jamaica as well. Once he took on the role of beekeeping teacher in Jamaica, Ted put his fear behind him for good and really began to appreciate the bees for more than simply the honey they produced.

“The more you learn about bees, the deeper down the rabbit hole you go because they’re just the unsung heroines in the world,” he explained. “Everything they do is beneficial. How can you not love that? And them?”

Continuing down that path, Ted stayed with beekeeping,selling honey and eventually starting uphis own business. Savannah Bee Company was officially launched in 2002 with the first retail store opening in Savannah in 2008. They have just recently opened their 14th retail location in the US.

But Ted, who is admittedly more comfortable in classrooms than boardrooms, was destined to take his business slightly off the traditional corporate path.

“They (bees) ended up saving my life in a way,” Ted mused. “Giving me a purpose and a career when I was wondering what I was going to do and why I hadn’t studied something practical,” he said with a laugh. “And it’s been great. It’s given me such an anchor in life. And so in many ways, I’m trying to give it back to them. Save them now.”

“Being a philosophy and religion major, I come at business from a different angle,” he explained, “and I really just like using it as a platform to teach just a little bit. It doesn’t have to be much to inspire people. I learned in the Peace Corp that … you don’t go there to make sweeping giant change … you make small changes, person by person, interaction by interaction.”

The Bee Cause Project began as just such an interaction.

The Bee Cause Project is a non-profit organization that installs observation honeybee hives in schools worldwide, with a mission to provide the next generation with opportunities to understand, engage, and learn from honey bees in order to connect with the natural environment while developing STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and math) skills.

Ted installed the first observation hive in a school in Charleston at the request of a friend whose child attended there. That first interaction was so successful that it led to another and then another. And when Ted met fellow beekeeper Tami Enright of Charleston, the two quickly began to formulate the concept that would become the Bee Cause Project.

Ted Dennard, founder and president of The Bee Cause Project. Pictured here with one of the observational hives that is located at the Wilmington Island location of the Savannah Bee Company.

“It’s really interesting to me how the Bee Cause Project organically began,” Project co-founder Tami Enright explained of the organization’s natural development. “And I think that’s partly why it’s been so successful. Because it wasn’t like, ‘wouldn’t it be cool to do something like this’ and then trying to figure it out what would ring true to people. It was created because there was a need and there was an interest. So, I think it’s cool that Ted was willing and able to be responsive to what kids were asking for and that I was in a place in my life where I could actually execute on the idea. So, it was the perfect storm.”

Tami Enright, Executive Director The Bee Cause Project

Unlike Ted, Tami was not introduced to beekeeping until she was an adult. Deciding to leave the corporate world to focus more time and energy on raising her four children, Tami found her own values and priorities taking a shift toward the natural world.

“I didn’t grow up with any sort of agricultural background or even interest in gardening or nature or anything like that,” she explained. “But I have four kids. And I think once I stopped working in corporate America - always being busy, always chasing the next thing - and I slowed down and I tried to simplify my life so that I could enjoy and build this family, certain things started presenting themselves as being important to me.”

“Like knowing where my food came from, knowing how to eat in season, knowing how to actually grow some of my own food so I could really appreciate the effort that went into that,” Tami continued. “And really understanding on a very micro-level, within my own supplyline, what it takes to grow food. And that’s when I had this ‘ah-ha moment’ that pollinators were as important as soil, and augmenting your soil, and having ample sunlight.”

So, she and a friend signed up for a beekeeping class.

“The minute I walked into that class, I was hooked. And it just opened up a whole other world for me that I had never even considered,” Tami said. “It’s really fascinating how I was just so enamored with the whole conversation and I just couldn’t get enough. I started reading everything I could get my hands on. I think the excitement I had for this new awareness was contagious with my family and with my friends and neighbors.”

“We got bees and we put them in our front yard so it would be easy for everyone to come visit the bees and watch us check our bees. It was just like this community effort and support network where we were sharing our honey and the kids would bring their friends over to see the bees. And then my kids started asking me to come to school to talk about bees and wear my bee suit and bring honey in for the teachers for gifts.”

A mutual friend introduced Ted and Tami at a Savannah Bee Company store opening in Charleston. They discussed their mutual interest in sharing their passion for bees with others and agreed to stay in touch.

“Within a week Ted called and said, ‘If schools would let you bring bees to school on purpose or start some sort of initiative where we can educate the next generation about bees and the importance of bees and their connection to our food … I’ll pay for it or I’ll help you in any way i need to,’” Tami recalled.

“Five years later, we’ve given bee grants to over 500 schools, every State, throughout Canada … It’s like pulling a thread on a sweater, you get started and you have no idea where it’s going to take you,” Tami mused. “It was an unassuming way of getting started, just two parents who understand that if you can get your kids to embrace change and start taking care of something, then they start caring about something.”

Initially Ted and Tami were very hands-on, personally installing the observation hives in the first 50 schools, but there came a point where they realized the demand was quickly outpacing and outstretching their own abilities to respond personally to every request and they had to take the time to systemize the process.

“When we first started, we did everything one on one and it was very personalized. These schools were early adopters. We were the only group in town trying to put bees in schools, so it was a foreign concept. You would think it would be a natural fit with school gardening programs, but it was a really big leap,” Tami explained.

“Ted and I did a lot of education and a lot of com- munity outreach and sitting down with board members, and in superintendents’ offices, and with risk managers and educators talking to them about the risk versus the reward,” she continued. “Those people started becoming our advocates.”

“We got through that early adopter phase and then it became a little more mainstream and we had bees in 75 schools and no one was giving it back, they’re all starting to see the increased test scores, and kids are not afraid of bees, and stinging incidents have gone down in a lot of cases because kids are more aware of how to conduct themselves in nature.”

“The schools started contacting us from all over the country,” Tami recalled. “Once I got a national funder, Whole Kids Foundation (non profit arm of Whole Foods Market) … they had a gardening program that was a national program and they really took us under their wing and said ‘you want to use our online application system for your bee grants and we’ll also give a little bit of money to help you get started.’”

“So then we had to sit down and say is this a local program? Is this a Ted and Tami thing? Or is this something bigger?”

They decided it was something bigger.

“I ended up templetizing the program and creating a guide for success,” Tami explained. “‘Do you have an interest in bringing bees to your campus? Here are the pitfalls, the risks, the rewards… all of it. Creating an application that weeded out people not

“The schools started contacting us from all over the country,” Tami recalled. “Once I got a national funder, Whole Kids Foundation (non profit arm of Whole Foods Market) … they had a gardening program an interest in bringing bees to your campus? Here are the pitfalls, the risks, the rewards… all of it. Creating an application that weeded out people not ready for it. And creating guidance for schools on how to create or find their own support network.”

“My goal,” Ted stated, “is to raise a generation that will understand, love, and protect the honey bees. Once you learn about them, you can’t help but love them.”

To date, The Bee Cause Project has placed observation hives in more than 450 schools. They have hives in all 50 states and every Canadian province. Bee grants have also been provided to establish bee and pollinator gardens, bee libraries, conventional bee hives and other supplies and educational materials.

The observation hives have frames that are enclosed in glass and a tube that allows the bees free movement to the outdoors. The hive allows students to observe the inner workings of a bee colony: they can observe as bees hatch and begin their busy lives, the queen can be seen laying eggs, and the bee “waggle dance” can be witnessed as workers communicate with others on the exact location of a prime spot for the collection of pollen.

These hives offer an important starting point for conversations that can go in any number of directions, providing educators with a unique opportunity to build curriculum in a wide array of subject matters around the lessons of the bees.

“The teachers, the parents and the kids are taking our program in so many different directions ... that I would never have imagined, it’s not just about beekeeping,” Tami said.

The Bee Cause Project is preparing to launch their next grant cycle beginning September 1, 2019. Schools and educational organizations like museums, farmers markets and libraries are encouraged to apply!

It’s important for entities that wish to apply to have a community support system in place. That system should include: a local beekeeper, an administrator who’s supportive, an educator who understands the educational piece of it. And a community partner, like an extension agent or master gardener. Creating a bee club of some type is important. So, if one person leaves, the whole program doesn’t die. School-wide support or community-wide support is vital.

A Bee Grant through The Bee Cause Program can include a hive, either the observation hive or traditional hives; but it could also be a monetary grant used to start or expand a program intended to support honey bees within the community. For more information visit their website.

Tami's son Kelly (right) is a Junior Beekeeper, he is pictured here with a fellow beekeeper in Exuma, Bahamas.