GROVELAND — Aside from Pentucket Regional School District’s student-body of nearly 2,300 students, Superintendent Dr. Justin Bartholomew is responsible for the care of a second hive — his 35,000 Italian honeybees.
Dr. Bartholomew is a beekeeper, a hobby he developed from a curiosity that began when he took science courses as undergraduate student that has since grown into a passion.
When PreK Students at Dr. Elmer S. Bagnall School in Groveland started studying insects, Dr. Bartholomew was on-hand for two days last week to share his passion with the students to help them explore the subject matter with a familiar face.
Over the course of a week, Dr. Bartholomew, who the students renamed “Dr. Bee,” made visits to each of Bagnall Schools’ PreK classrooms to generate buzz about insects with a special presentation.
Dr. Bee brought in his beekeeping suits, empty hives, beekeeping tools, and samples of beeswax and honey and talked the students through the entire beekeeping process, from getting the bees and watching them build their hives, to getting dressed up in the suit, to harvesting the honey and beeswax from the hives.
The students had some of their own materials for Dr. Bee too, including a large book on animal habitats, storybooks about bees, and a miniature beekeeping suit, which one student wore for most of the presentation.
He answered students questions, which included “What happens if a bee gets stuck on a flower?,” “What do bees make with nectar?,” and “Have you ever been stung by a bee?”
Students also got to pretend to be bees collecting “pollen” in the form of ping pong balls from around the classroom to bring back to the hive, replicating the way real hives operate.
Although Dr. Bee wasn’t able to bring any of his bees into the classroom, he shared pictures and videos of himself in action as he tended to his hives, and even showed students the live feed of his hives, where a few bees buzzed around.
As a thank you for his valuable lesson, students presented Dr. Bee with a card that they made and signed.
“I had a great time sharing my bees with our PreK friends,” said Dr. Bartholomew. “I hope that they now have a greater understanding of how important bees are and that they learned to not be scared of them, because they are such important organisms that sometimes have a bad reputation, but these students really seemed to appreciate and understand how important they are.”
Discover more from John Guilfoil Public Relations
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.