Andy Ammons starts his class by taking students to the prairie behind the Newcomer building. As they walk through the tall grass, students can see the bees flying around. Though the classroom may make some students uncomfortable, both bees and Ammons are in their natural habitat.
Ammons gets stung a lot, and sometimes, even on purpose. During his course, Pollinators in Peril, Ammons makes a point of stinging himself. He catches a bee, and puts it directly on his arm, encouraging the bee to release the stinger. He says it’s to show the class what happens when a bee stings a person.
The bee releases the stinger into the skin, leaving behind its pulsing insides. The bee usually dies within a few hours after stinging, a last effort at protecting the hive.
Ammons cares deeply for his bees, “It’s hard in the spring, when I check the hives and see the hives that have dies,” he said, “you have to clean out the dead bodies and that’s kind of hard… You do get attached to them”
The sting of the bee typically results in swelling, tender limbs and pain, but not for Ammons. He said that he has been stung so many times that he no longer experiences those symptoms, only slight swelling. He said if you get the stinger out right away, the sting will not affect you as badly as when it lingers in the skin.
Sometimes, his students even get stung. Ammons said that every year he teaches his course, a student will get stung at least once, “and it could be you, unless you wear the proper clothing.” Ammons encourages his students to wear long pants, long sleeve shirts, and bright colors. He does not always heed his own advice, “I would rather not be hot,” he said, “and I’ve already been stung so many times.”
During the course, students learn about the importance of pollinators to the environment and to humans who depend on them for food. The students work with the bees very closely, “students learn to recognize how honey is made,” Ammons said, “and the importance of bees to nature and agriculture.”
Ammons enjoys sharing his etymological knowledge with the students. He’s been working with bees since his late teens, “I was able to get a summer job working with a researcher at Clemson University,” he said, “I did this experiment where we were trying to work with the bees… that was my first opportunity taking care of the hive.”
During class, he shows the students how to paint the bees. He begins by putting bees in what is known as a marking device.
As Ammons demonstrates how to mark his bees with a paint marker, he is sure to color their thorax. At times, students mark too much of the bee, putting color not only on the thorax but also on the abdomen and head. Too much paint isn’t an issue for the bee, it just makes them extremely colorful.
Ammons says that beekeepers mark the bees, so that they can tell which bee is which, how old the bee is, and if the bee is a queen, a worker, or a drone. The queen is the biggest bee, the mother to all of the bees. The worker bees are the females, who do the jobs around the hive. The drone bees are the males, who do not have a stinger.
The work includes a reward. Ammons also gets honey from the bees. For this part of the labor, he takes his students extracting at the Merry Lea Environmental Learning center, which is situated about 45 minutes southeast of the main campus. All of the equipment and space for the extraction process is at Merry Lea. The process is simple: collect the honey frames, open the wax, put the frames in the machine, collect the honey, and finally jar it.
At Merry Lea, Ammons brings around 60 frames to extract honey from. His students help with about half. The rest is up to him. The students take on a lot of the work while extracting the honey, including holding down the extracting device, a machine that spins to loosen the honey. They also use the extracting tools to open the wax seals and begin the process.
After the class gets through 30 frames, the jarring process begins. A strainer is used to separate some of the honeycomb from the honey, making the honey much smoother.
In a typical year, Jeremy Corson usually keeps bees in the prairie as well. This year, he is still providing honey from his past bees, at the WestLawn dining hall, but he is not currently managing his own bees. The hives are located in multiple prairies throughout the campus.
Ammons was clear that life as a bee is no joke, “It’s a cutthroat life to be a bee.” He said that the female bees dominate the hive. During the winter, the worker bees, who are the females, kick out their brothers, the drones. Ammons said that they do this because the females don’t need the men to survive anymore and “the drones just waste space and resources.” The worker bees keep their body heat, by bundling together. In extreme cold, they can live up to a week, because of how tight they pack themselves together.
Ammons is an entomologist. He studies insects and his love for them started during his childhood, “We weren’t allowed to have pets,” he said “so bugs were kind of mine. I would catch crickets and grasshoppers.”
In graduate school at Purdue, Ammons had to make his own collection of insects for an entomology class. He gathered different types, pinned them down, and studied them. He had to kill the insects, in order to finish this assignment “I don’t really like killing any insects,” he said, “but if you’re making an insect collection, it’s just part of the job.”
The course evolves along with the weather. As winter approaches, the bees get ready to hibernate and Ammons extracts the honey. He even sells jars of his honey to students at Goshen College for five dollars per jar.
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