A Menlo Student Switched Schools Partly for the Bees

Our school spreadsheet, the year the eldest applied to high schools, had fourteen columns. None of them was bees. I see now that this was an oversight.

The numbers, for anyone adding a column. The club was founded in 2014 by a biology teacher who keeps bees at home. In 2021 it had 36 members, up to ten of whom work a harvest at a time. The school has three hives, kept away from where students hang out; one, the paper notes, is near the faculty parking lot. They produce about 36 pounds of honey per harvest, roughly three times a year.

One hive by the faculty parking lot. That is either an accident of geography or the most effective way ever devised to stop teachers from lingering in their cars.

The founder, interviewed in a shirt that read "Follow the bees and you get honey," was frank about the risks. "You can get stung," she said. But honeybees are non-aggressive, and "as long as you stay still, you shouldn't get stung."

That is also my strategy at every school board meeting.

A senior who co-led the club in 2021 had been afraid of bees when she joined as a freshman, and described it to the paper as "a very chill club."

Menlo has been selling the results for years. A 2018 issue of the school's magazine recorded that Upper School beekeepers harvested honey and wax and sold candles, soaps and honey at lunch. The school's clubs page lists beekeeping alongside robotics and Model UN, and says most clubs are started and led by students.

We had bees too, briefly, under the deck. Nobody in our house joined the club. I called a man. The man said they were not bees. The middle one asked if we could keep them anyway, as a club. I said no. He said that was not very chill.