Be kind to the bees: Burgettstown students learn important role bees play
Karen Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Urban beekeeper Kourtnie Regan shows a fourth-grade class at Burgettstown Area Elementary School part of a beehive during a recent program about the bees.
Karen Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Fourth-graders at Burgettstown Area Elementary School eagerly asked and answered questions during a presentation by urban beekeeper Kourtnie Regan of Alvéole about the importance of honeybees.
Courtesy of LANXESS
LANXESS, a specialty chemicals company that operates a production site in Burgettstown, welcomed a hive of honeybees to its campus this summer as part of its sustainability efforts. Kourtnie Regan, right, an urban beekeeper from Alvéole, cares for the bees.
Courtesy of LANXESS
Kourtnie Regan, an urban beekeeper with Alvéole, tends to a beehive that was adopted by LANXESS, a specialty chemicals company in Burgettstown. The bee population around the world is declining rapidly, and providing a safe environment is one way of helping to boost the population.
Kourtnie Regan, a beekeeper with Alvéole, an urban beekeeping company, stood at the front of a classroom at Burgettstown Elementary school, next to an educational beekeeping display: a beehive, a smoker, and protective gear.
Her mission was to teach fourth-graders about the importance of bees, specifically, honeybees – pollinators who play an integral role in nature and our food system.
Regan discussed the residents of the hive: the queen, worker bees (females) and drones (males). The fourth-graders, captivated, listened to her wide-eyed.
“How many bees do you think live in a hive like this?” asked Regan.
Hands shot up as she gave them choices – 500, 1,000, 5,000, 20,000 or 50,000 bees.
“There can be up to 50,000 bees in a hive like this in the middle of summer,” Regan said, as one boy who guessed correctly pumped his fist. “Every single one of those bees has an equally important job to do in the beehive.”
Overall, it was a honey of a day for the fourth-graders, where Regan taught four sessions on beekeeping.
The students learned that bees typically live for about 40 days and spend their lives tirelessly working; collecting pollen and nectar for the colony, pollinating plants, and storing honey in their honeycombs.
About 95% of the bees in the hive are females who perform specific jobs.
At the end of the program, Regan taught the students the “waggle dance,” which a worker bee performs to tell other bees exactly where a flower patch is located.
The school program was coordinated by Alvéole and LANXESS, a specialty chemical manufacturer that operates a production facility in Burgettstown (the company produces pigments for a variety of uses, including the red balls outside of Target, the Eiffel Tower, and some of Pittsburgh’s iconic bridges).
Canada-headquartered Alvéole is an urban beekeeping service which installs beehives on the roofs or grounds of businesses, schools and other organizations.
Overall, Alvéole works with about 500 different companies in 42 cities around the world, including 23 in the U.S., and manages more than 4,430 beehives.
The hive at LANXESS is home to tens of thousands of bees, and employees have welcomed the new “workers.”
“Whether watching from afar, checking out the hive on a break, or even joining the beekeeper during her regular visits, our employees thoroughly enjoyed having the bees on site this summer, especially the honey delivery at the end of the season,” said Mike Mackin, Corporate Communications Manager at LANXESS, noting employees learned a lot about the life of a honeybee and the role they play in food production.
Giving the hive of bees a safe environment is a way for LANXESS to boost the population and help the community by improving the pollination of local flowers and crops.
“Environmental protection and sustainability are at the forefront of our business and production processes, and the on-site hive has been a physical reminder to our employees, visitors, and business partners to always be environmentally conscious,” said Mackin.
Regan wants to raise students’ awareness about the importance of bees and other pollinators for food production and ecosystems.
Bees can fly up to 3 miles from their home as they search for the best nectar sources. When they land on a flower, pollen sticks to their legs and underbellies. They spread that pollen as they fly and land elsewhere.
That pollination process is what allows plants to fruit and grow. In that way, bees are an integral part of nature and our food system.
Wild bees, butterflies and bumblebees, among others, are responsible for the pollination of over 130 varieties of fruit and vegetable crops – among them, almonds, tomatoes, strawberries, avocados, and watermelon.
But the bee population is declining rapidly in the United States, which poses a serious threat to food security and nutrition.
“One of the most important parts of my job is to teach people about how important bees are and that we need to protect them because if we don’t save the bees, then we’re not going to have any food to eat,” Regan told the students. “When you sit down to dinner tonight and you look at your plate, you can think there can be up to a third of this plate that you wouldn’t have if there were no bees.”
Regan shared some ideas for how kids and their families can help: Say no to pesticides; mow the lawn less; support environmentally friendly agriculture such as local farms; and spread the word about how important bees are.
Most of the honeybee hives Regan manages are on rooftops in downtown Pittsburgh.
She pointed out that honeybees are docile. They only sting in self-defense and will die immediately afterward, Regan said.
Fourth-grade teacher Lucas Rendulic marveled at how interested his students were in the bee program.
They asked questions, told Regan about their encounters with bees, and were fascinated when she told them that worker bees feed and clean the queen bee, “and they’re even going to carry her poop outside the hive for her.”
“In my 11 or 12 years of teaching, I’ve never seen a class more engaged and more attentive,” said Rendulic.