Pinelawn hosts Honey Bee Experience

Pinelawn Memorial Park and Arboretum hosted its annual Honey Bee Experience last week to highlight the bee’s importance to Long Island’s ecosystem.

More than 350 community members and 62 Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts from five local troops gathered on the Pinelawn grounds on Sunday, Sept. 18 to participate in a Q&A with master beekeeper Steve Chen to learn more about the honey bee and to enjoy a hands-on learning experience at the hives. 

Pinelawn also provided honey bee arts and crafts, a “Find the Queen,” children’s activity where participants searched for the queen bee within the observation hive and fresh honey tasting straight from the bee hive frames.

“Honey Bees and other pollinators are in decline. With more and more honey bee species being added to the list of endangered species, it its becoming more necessary than ever to educate the public on how essential these insects are to the beauty of our grounds and to Long Island’s larger ecosystem,” Fred Hoffmann, grounds supervisor at Pinelawn Memorial Park and Arboretum, said in a written statement. “We hope all our Pinelawn families and local community members were able to take a moment to admire how beautiful the honey bee is while we shared our own knowledge of their role in our environment.”

Pinelawn’s Honey Bee Hive Program began in 2017 to support the honey bee population and promote pollination. Across Pinelawn’s six hives, they host over 500,000 honey bees that pollinate the grounds’ gardens as well as the surrounding landscape.