Spring 2017 Campus Sustainability Fund Proposal

Spring 2017 Campus Sustainability Fund Proposal

Paul Smiths College Beekeeping Association

Project Leader: Jessi McCarty Email: CP: (315) 748-2536

Co-participant: Eric Simandle, Cody Kautzman, Kyle Gleichauf, Lydia Harvey, William Lord, Justin Gillen, Andrew Ingersoll

Total Cost: $475.00

Project Summary

Goals

The Paul Smiths College Beekeeping Association is looking to get funding from the Campus Sustainability Fund grant. This under $500 grant would allow us to purchase ten kits, each kit consists of one bee suit, a pair of gloves, one bee brush, and one hive tool. This grant will also allow us to purchase two internal feeders for when we are required to feed the bees to help supplement their food stores before winter and in early spring. The last thing that the grant will help with is to reimburse our mentor Bruce Kilgore, whom fronted the club $270 to pre-order two, three pound packages of Italian honey bees. Having personal experience in beekeeping I brought up my own equipment to use in the club. We have found access to electric fencing so we have protection for the hives.

Project Justification and Relevance

The PSC BA fills a niche in the college community that has long been empty. Beekeeping fits hand in hand with maple syrup production and has many positive outcomes. Bee yards improve the surrounding flora in a 3 mile radius of the hives. This increases yields of gardens and boosts pollination. The PSC VIC can hold education programs and teach the community that comes to visit the VIC. While the PSC BA can hold workshops and invite speakers to come talk on campus to get our student body involved. When the apiary is fully operational we hope to sell locally produced honey in the PSC book store the PSC VIC store. The combined efforts of the student body members will educate the younger generation about the importance of the honey bee and what we can all do to help support them. Eventually many of us would like this program to become a class that is included in the PSC curriculum.

Method

The PSC BA has been holding weekly meetings to get familiar with students that are interested in beekeeping. The club will require members to sign a waiver and notify us of bee allergies, we have spoken with health services about the availability of EpiPen's, they will provide us Benedrilfor use and will help handle any emergencies, should they arise. Using the CSF grant the PSC BA would purchase equipment from the Betterbee company, and Amazon to establish two hives and manage them. The ten kits acquired would allow up close and personal experiences with the bees in a safe manner and also help the learning process and this is critical! Once everything is set we will follow a management schedule that we have written up during regular meetings. Working with the PSC VIC we will have informal educational opportunities held at the VIC and on PSC campus. The action plan is very ambitious and hopes to set up the club for future growth into other fields of beekeeping including wax making, candle making, soap making, pollen production, propolis making, 'nucs', queens, and other bee related products. I was able to bring up some of my own equipment, like two langstroth hives and two bee smokers and my knowledge to compliment the experiences.

Budget Justification

Beekeeping takes some equipment to run and some of it may sound like it has come from another world, Hives are the homes that beekeepers house bee colonies in, these are essential to the survival of a colony, this is where they produce young and store honey and pollen. A beekeeper needs protective clothing to not get stung, they wear bee suits and veils. They also use what is called a smoker to calm the bees and mask any pheromones that would otherwise make it difficult to work with them. While an electric fence is vital this far north to protect the hives from bears and other scavengers.

Support Documentation

Monday, February 6, 2017

Dear Paul Smith’s College Community and members of the Campus Sustainability Office,

I am writing to show my full support for the project proposed by Paul Smith’s College student Jessi McCarty and the future members of the soon-to-be-formed Paul Smith’s College Beekeeping Club. This group of students approached me and suggested the VIC as the permanent host site for a fenced apiary, as well as long-term storage site for equipment. I fully agreed to this, and added a commitment to having my summer staff and permanent staff educators include a weekly informal educational program about bees during the VIC’s high summer tourist season.

The Paul Smith’s College VIC has a demonstrated commitment to informal education, and has been intentionally providing habitat for pollinators for over 20 years. The native species Butterfly House, open seven days a week in the summer, along with the official Monarch Waystation adjacent to this structure, are proven avenues of valuable educational opportunities for the VIC’s 1,000s of summer visitors. The VIC will be a dedicated key partner in taking the hard work of this student Beekeeping Club and helping it lead to an increased awareness in our visitors about the critical role all pollinators play in our lives and the ecosystem.

Again, the VIC will fully support these student’s endeavors. This particular student-led initiative is very much aligned with the VIC’s mission to connect people to nature and is also supportive of the overall PSC strategic plan of increasing the co-curricular connections between the VIC and the academic institution.

Thank you very much for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Kendra Ormerod
PSC VIC Director
RAELM Faculty
(518) 327-6234

Karen Edwards letter of support

April 6, 2017

To whom it may Concern:

I would like to take this opportunity to support the Bee Keeping Club’s request to situate the bee hives on either the VIC property or the Osgood Pond property. There seems to be pros and cons for both sites. I will leave that decision to the experts. I have meet with representatives from the club and was very impressed with their knowledge, enthusiasm, and commitment to bee keeping and the educational benefits from this endeavor. They shared their budget, constitution, and plans for the club going into the future.

I think this project is very worthy of funding and support. It would enhance the programming at the VIC as Kendra has stated in her support letter and it would enhance our hands on, experiential learning opportunities as well. It has become a very popular addition to farms and landowner’s properties and would give the Environment and Society’s programs a very visible marketing tool. It is also a very responsible thing to do for the sustainability and environmental well-being of our country. The college has as part of the strategic plan to reach out to the community and be a partner on community projects and this club and project would connect people in the community, that have information to share or that want to learn about bee keeping, to the college.

We are planning on having a faculty member working the garden area at Osgood Pond for the summer time and having students work with her as well. The garden and the site will be used in the fall as well for our Immersion semester and our Sustainable Agriculture courses. Having the hives available at either the VIC or the Osgood Pond site would allow for additional discussions in these courses as well.

If there are any additional topics that I could provide information on in order to help this club and project move forward, please feel free to contact me.