Beekeeping at Osgood Farm
Jessi McCarty, President of the Beekeeping Club and current Osgood Pond Semester student:
I have always been fascinated with the art of beekeeping since I discovered dilapidated hives in my Uncles neighbor’s driveway. This sparked a four-year journey until I caught my first swarm at 15 years old. Fast forward to the birth of the Club at Paul Smiths College with the help of a class and some friends. The combination of a Politics of the Environment class that started the path to starting a club and then the help of interested friends is what helped get the club on its feet. It wasn’t easy but we navigated our way through the proper outlets to get permission and funding to start two hives at the Osgood Farm sight.
Cody Kautzman, Vice-President of the Beekeeping Club:
My fellow officers, Jessi McCarty and Kyle Gleichauf started the beekeeping club in 2016, my freshman year. Our president, Jessi McCarty has been beekeeping since he was 15, and one late night discussion that kept us up until 8 a.m., lead to this topic. We discussed starting a beekeeping club, without thinking this crazy late night idea would go anywhere. We then passed the idea onto our friend Kyle Gleichauf, who also showed interests. From here we found more students with interest, and thus the Paul Smiths College Beekeeping Association was born. I knew nothing about beekeeping when we started this project. Since then I have learned so much about beekeeping, met other new people with an interest in beekeeping, and plan to have bee hives at my own home someday. This project grew bigger than we ever expected and is continuing to grow. I have learned so much, and continue to learn about beekeeping through the great experiences and opportunities provided by beekeeping club.
This project was supported by a grant from the Campus Sustainability Fund.
