November 30, 2015
Welcome back! I hope
you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Annie and I continue to be thankful for
the warm welcome we have received to this wonderful community over the past
five months.
Over Thanksgiving I had the opportunity to try
some honey from the hives on the Virginia Wesleyan College campus. Though we
always keep some honey in the house to sweeten tea, put on some bread, or to soothe
a sore throat, this particular honey was special. It was part of a healthy
supply I received from VWC Professor of History, Dr. Dan Margolies. It was
delivered to my office just a few days after a faculty dinner I hosted when Dan
told me about a class he teaches at Virginia Wesleyan, INST 161: Bees and
Beekeeping.
Dan has been teaching this
class at Virginia Wesleyan since 2002. He maintains the hives on campus and his
students and he harvest, extract, and bottle the honey. Dr. Margolies says that
this is the first time he has harvested honey on campus in about 10 years as
the program is unfunded and has been struggling to keep going in the face of
Colony Collapse Disorder and other challenges.
The honey is packaged in a large container (pictured below)
and small glass jars which are great because they can be kept in carry-on
baggage (not confiscated by TSA). The labels on the containers were designed by
a former student in the bees and beekeeping class.
According to Dr. Margolies,
Virginia Wesleyan is one of the only liberal arts colleges in the country that has
a beekeeping program focused on hive management rather than on animal behavior
(such as the program at Wellesley) or as part of an agriculture program
(Maryland, Virginia Tech). He notes with pride, "We maintain all organic
hives without the use of any chemicals or pesticides. We raise our queens
as well."
The beehives are yet another unique and distinctive feature of our
campus life and have been promoted in The
Virginian-Pilot and in the 2012 edition of Marlin Magazine. This is
clearly another example of the "value added" aspect of our liberal
arts education.
Thanks to Professor Margolies for making this
unique learning experience available to our students.
