by Caciques Helen and Harry

With K3 and K4’s academic weeks coming to a close, we are also passing off our Human Ecology Projects to our friends in K1 andK2, who will be picking it up when they’re done with their Kayak and Down Island expeditions. For the last few days, we have been hard at work, studying osprey, agriculture, mangroves, and bees. My group, the remaining half of Coconut Palm, was hard at work trying to get bees back to The Island School campus, both for the pollination of our orchard and so we can get fresh honey into our kitchens. After doing some research, the team, including Claire, Brian, Frankie, Erik and I, realized that in order to successfully start a hive we’d need to a get a queen honeybee to make The Island School its home. And as simple as that sounds, its really not. Groups had done it in the past, but the hive never stayed for more than a few months. We decided that we would be the group to change the future of The Island School bee issue. We all made calls to a countless numbers of government officials and local and American beekeepers, seeing if it would be possible to get a queen shipped in. Though we got some leads, we were left searching the island for a local hive, a quest that took us through the Inner Loop and Clubhouse with no success. It was a long couple of days, filled with bee suit hunts and tireless phone calls. But, with our time for kayak approaching, we have left successors in pretty good shape. With a number of leads for beekeepers on Eleuthera, we might have a queen bee for our orchard in the near future and fresh honey on the way.