Bees Arrive at Massey High
As part of the Field to Plate concept, The Hospitality Academy is very excited to announce the arrival of two hives containing approximately 25,000 bees in each hive at MHS. The bees will be managed by BeezThingz a company that supervise bees for schools and other organisations. Their beekeepers will visit the site once a month to check on the bees and ensure good health in the hives. Our Yr 12 students will have a chance to be involved in the bee management and will be enrolled in two unit standards from SIT, (The Southern Institute of Technology), in apiculture.
Any students at MHS who are allergic to bees need to register with the MHS Health Centre as per our normal safety policy. The Health Centre will have an epipen plus the academy office will also have one in case of emergency.
About our bees. These bees are Italian cross bred bees, especially bred for non-aggression and good honey production. There are only eight bee species that are honey producers out of about 20,000 species of bees in the world. In NZ there are twenty-eight species of native bees but that are quite solitary and do not live in large groups or make honey. Our bees will forage for flowering plants up to three kilometres away and still be able to find their way back to their hive. Bee friendly plants include Lavender, Borage, Tree Lucerne and Bottle Brush plus others. Honey harvesting time is in March so we will have to wait till next year for that!
