The Mason Spirit

At George Mason University, New Century College professor German Perilla, MAIS ’12, and his students regularly mix with royalty. Their goal is to create the ideal queen. Queen bee, that is.

This past spring, Perilla led a group of 12 students in the first-ever Beekeeping and Sustainability course, a class that had them suiting up and getting up close and personal with hundreds of honey bees in the new apiary on top of the Rappahannock River Parking Deck.

In teams, students managed the hives throughout the semester, monitoring the strength and vitality of each colony. In addition to the hands-on experience, students also learned about bee communication, reproduction, threats, and challenges to the honeybee, and the importance of bees to the general environment.

Mason students, with Kathleen Curtis, executive assistant to CHSS dean and member of the Beekeepers Association of Northern Virginia (BANV), check on colonies of bees maintained on Fairfax Campus. The bee colonies are maintained by members of the BANV, with help of a grant from the Office of Sustainability, and used in educational workshops through the Mason Sustainability Institute. Photo by Alexis Glenn

“Ever since I was a kid, I have been fascinated with bees,” says Emily Guagliardi, an integrative studies major with a focus in elementary education. “When I heard about how bees are disappearing and that they are in danger, my interest began to pique.”

“Bees are so important to the ecosystem,” says Lora Sharkey, an environmental and sustainability studies major who assisted Perilla during the course. “I thought it would be useful to have practical experience working with bees to understand the challenges of beekeepers [who make a living from] the products and services bees provide.”

Mason alumnus German Perilla, Research Fellow for Bee Conservation, extracts honey at the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the New Century College beer and honey tasting during Alumni Weekend 2013. Photo by Alexis Glenn

The course, which had a waiting list of nearly 100 students, is just one component of NCC’s Honey Bee Initiative.

In 2012, Kathleen Curtis, executive assistant to the dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, used funds from the Patriot Green Fund to start an apiary in the grassy area between the Shenandoah Parking Deck and Patriot Circle. Since then, another apiary—primarily instructional—has been constructed on the Rappahannock Parking Deck, and the first apiary mainly has become a demonstration station for community members.

“I am thrilled that the initial bee project was well received and that many have caught the vision of what could be,” says Curtis, who is also a member of the Beekeepers Association of Northern Virginia. “Clearly, the Patriot Green Fund project not only served as a catalyst to classes that benefit the student community, but also served to open the door to wonderful opportunities for future classes and research that will benefit students, as well as the local community and beyond.”

From local Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops in Fairfax to isolated communities in South America, many different people have been touched in some way by the Mason honey bees. Perilla, a world-renowned master beekeeper and sustainable development expert, regularly travels around the world—most lately to the Peruvian Amazon—to help communities learn about beekeeping and create their own sustainable businesses around this practice.

The apiaries also provide an educational tool closer to home. Mason has invited local schools, organizations, and groups to the apiary to learn more about the importance of the bees.

“There is such potential for educational opportunities here,” says Lisa Gring-Pemble, associate dean of New Century College. “Almost any discipline from economics to biology can learn from these apiaries. Honey bees are the perfect integrative vehicle for teaching conservation, community sustainable development, social entrepreneurship, and environmental justice.”

Guagliardi, whose focus at Mason is elementary education, sees an enormous potential in using bees to educate young children. “As a future teacher, I’d like to teach my students the importance of honey bees and how they do so much more than make honey,” she says.

Indeed, even small apiaries such as the one at Mason can assist in the overall health and well-being of honey bees. Considering the tremendous loss of bee colonies in the wild and backyard and commercial apiaries over the past years, the introduction of managed hives, such as the ones at Mason, helps rebuild the local population.

In addition to population building and strengthening, managed hives provide bees that improve the landscape surrounding the locale where they live, says Curtis. With a greater abundance of pollinators, plants become stronger and more firmly established, which contributes to soil stability and water conservation.

Another tangible benefit of all this work is, of course, the sweet reward of honey. Recently, Perilla, Gring-Pemble, Curtis, and other Mason folks extracted more than 85 pounds of honey from the campus hives. Although there are no plans to sell the honey, Gring-Pemble says that the Mason community will have opportunities to taste it at future Mason special programs and events.

New Century College is working with Sweet Virginia, a local beekeeping cooperative that seeks to spark children’s curiosity for conservation through honey bee activities. The organization has provided support for honey bee research at Mason and currently has two Mason interns helping with its educational and marketing components.

All those involved with the apiaries hope that the “buzz” continues to grow. “We hope to use the honey bee as a catalyst for something much larger,” says Gring-Pemble.