New Century College (NCC), housed within the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS), aims to contribute to growing efforts to address issues relating to honey bee sustainability in the region. Through the George Mason University Honey Bee Initiative, New Century College has established a second teaching apiary on the George Mason University Fairfax campus.
Honey bees are a key indicator of environmental health and play an integral role in the sustainability of local, national, and international food supplies. Recent years have seen the dramatic loss of honey bee colonies throughout the country due to a variety of factors, including loss of habitat, bee viruses and parasites, use of some agricultural products, and outdated management practices.
George Mason’s new instruction apiary serves as a lab for Mason students in a variety of courses throughout the University. For example, NCLC 395: Beekeeping and Sustainability premiered in the Spring 2013 semester. Due to the hands-on nature of the class, only 12 enrollments were permitted, which left a waitlist of nearly one hundred interested students. In the future, students may earn a beekeeping certificate while acquiring entrepreneurial skills.
The first apiary, established through the Patriot Green Fund grant issued by George Mason’s Office of Sustainability, initially provided Mason students the opportunity to work directly with bees and now serves primarily as a demonstration apiary for students and visitors from campus and the surrounding community. Students and visitors alike learn about the importance of pollinators and human food sources, beehive management best-practices, and local beekeepers’ environmental efforts through the use of these two apiaries.
This apiary program also presents tremendous potential to encourage global sustainability initiatives and economic alternatives for underserved regions around the globe like the on-going relationship between George Mason and indigenous communities of the Peruvian Amazon.
Overseeing the apiary project is Mason’s German Perilla, a world-renowned master beekeeper and sustainable development expert. Mason staff member Kathleen Curtis, a member of the Beekeepers Association of Northern Virginia, has also been instrumental in the initiation of the project.
NCC looks forward to working with local and international organizations to further this project. Currently a relationship is being developed with Northern Virginia’s Sweet Virginia Foundation (SVF), a charitable beekeeping cooperative that seeks to spark children’s curiosity for conservation through honey bee activities. SVF has offered to serve as a supplementary field station and work with Mason student interns to provide experiential learning beekeeping activities to elementary and middle school children.
June 20, 2013
