To be in the Bee Club or to not be in the Bee Club, that is the question.
The Bee Club is a student-run organization at White Station High School (WSHS), dedicated to educating students about the art of beekeeping. Members discuss the parts of a beehive, diseases that affect bees and how to catch a swarm.
“[The purpose] is to inform people about bees and [to explain] how the stereotypes against them aren’t true,” Dailyn Dortch (12), Vice President of the Bee Club, said. “They aren’t evil, they aren’t going to sting you, [plus] how they help the environment and why we need bees.”
The club’s social media manager, Paxson Abney (11), believes the information shared at meetings is what makes them unique. Unlike other clubs, the Bee Club is focused solely on bees and beekeeping.
“I think it’s one of our more informational clubs,” Abney said. “There are other clubs like Key Club [and] Spruce up Sparta, those are all volunteer clubs, but I feel like this club [is good] if you really want to learn stuff.”
When it comes to bees, the most common misconception is that they will sting whenever they come in contact with a human. In reality, bees only sting when threatened, or if someone or something gets too close to the brood chamber, which is the area of the hive where eggs, larvae and pupae develop. Otherwise, they mind their own business.
“They’re not here to harm, and I feel like a lot of people are really scared of bees, which is justified, but I genuinely believe that they, like all creatures, have a purpose and don’t deserve to be exterminated,” Abney said.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, about one-third of the human diet involves food that is pollinated, and bees are crucial in that process. Many foods humans eat depend on bees and would not be readily available should the bee population decline.
“The world would probably crumble [without bees] because our food supply would be affected and then we would have world hunger, and then the world population would die out,” Dortch said.
Each bee plays a specific role in order to better the hive. The queen bee functions as the leader and populates the hive, but only the strongest queen can have that responsibility.
“There’s these little sacks that [the queen bees] are put in while they grow, and once they fully form, they come out and then they fight to the death,” Dortch said.
The Bee Club plans to keep busy in the future, aspiring to get a hive on campus to house their own bees. In order to do this, the club has already received state certification; however, due to a lack of SCS policy, they will need to create their own plan of action for a hive on the school campus. Currently, club meetings take place on Tuesdays in Dr. Madu’s room.
“Because we’re such a new club, we’ve really just been discussing what goes into caring for bees … Right now, we’re talking about getting a hive so we can actually do the processes here at the school,” Abney said. “Join the bee club.”