1. Last summer, the Building and Grounds Team planted a fruit tree orchard directly south of the barn: peach, apple, plum, cherry, and pear varieties.
2. This year, we are adding 3 new bee hives located in the furtherest south west corner of the Fellowship's property.
3. April 12th kids from Cub Scout Pack 79 and the Fellowship will plant a pollinator garden north west of the building. Pack 79 donated a $1,000 worth of pollinator plants to the Fellowship. Friends of Coal Creek will help direct the planting.
Bee Rules
- Please Bee Kind!
- Do not touch, push, or open our homes!
- Give us a little space, please stay back 10ft to avoid our busiest flight paths!
- We want to bee good neighbors, don’t bother us and we won’t bother you!
- Have a nice day!
Honey Bees
These are domestic European honeybees, they are very calm! Honeybees are great for local gardens and plant-life as prolific pollinators.
You will see the bees around gathering pollen to make honey or supping water for hydration and batting their wings to help keep the hive cooler on hotter days.
Bees start as eggs, then develop into larva, then pupa, then they come out as fully formed bees after 21 days.
Our Bee Keeper
Hello everyone! My name is Taylor and I’ll be your resident beekeeper.
I am so excited to be keeping my bees at your beautiful Fellowship!
I’m a third year beekeeper and I’d love to take a minute and walk you through what’s it’s going to be like to have new bee neighbors.
I will be checking on the bees about once a week. Normally keeping a distance of 10ft gives them plenty of room, but if you see me tending to them you’ll want to give them a bit more space since they won’t be in the best mood! Besides that, all I need from anyone is for you to sit back and enjoy seeing the bees around the garden!
There are a lot of great benefits to having honeybees. They are good for local gardens and prolific as plant life pollinators. Surrounding gardens and orchards will see a significant increase in flowering and fruiting. My gentle bees will also help dilute more aggressive bee behavior by interbreeding with more aggressive feral bee colonies.
Beekeeping can actually reduce stings in an area by outcompeting feral bees. According to studies by CSU and Utah State University most insect stings can be attributed to yellow jackets and papers wasps. In fact their estimates concluded 90% of all stings are yellow jackets alone.
European honeybees are very docile and unlikely to sting. If they sting they die so they only sting if they feel threatened.
Next year, the first jar of Fellowship honey will be auctioned off with a starting bid of $1,000. 🤣
The bad guys:
The good guy:
If you have any questions about our new ventures to encourage pollinators, don't hesitate to contact us.
Regards,
Building and Grounds Team
