By Jennifer Colosimo
Cindy Hodges remembers trekking into the woods one day when she was a child to peek under the lid of her neighbor’s mysterious boxes that she kept there. As soon as she lifted it, she went running in fear when she heard an unidentified buzzing from underneath. A few years later, that buzz sounded again, this time on a farm in North Georgia. Here, she watched a farmer pull glistening, golden honeycomb from under the very same kind of lid. She even got to hold it, and fear quickly turned into excitement. As an adult, she attended a class at the Chattahoochee Nature Center run by the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association, and by the end of the program, she knew she was getting bees of her own. Today she is the beekeeper for Dunwoody Nature Center, inspiring both children and adults to get their hands sticky, too.
What do you love about the beekeeping programs at the Dunwoody Nature Center?
Cindy Hodges: This is a wonderful environment for bees and beekeepers. We have monthly speakers up in the pavilion, offer hive inspections up the hill for club members to learn how to manage their own bees and the Junior Beekeeper program (my absolute favorite) is held once a year in the spring.
What kinds of things do junior beekeepers get to do?
CH: Participants get to learn about honeybees, dress up in bee suits and go into the hives at the nature center. They’ll hold a frame of bees and a drone (a male bee, which is actually stingless) and learn what worker bees, brood, honey and pollen look like in a hive. They learn about the biology of the bee, how to light a smoker and how to make a frame that the bees live on in the hive. This program has helped many children and their parents overcome their fear of honeybees. More importantly, several of our young participants have become beekeepers, and that is so important for our future.
What do you wish more people knew about bees and beekeeping?
CH: Some folks seem to be afraid of bees. When bees are foraging for nectar or pollen, they are not interested in people. They are just finding food for themselves and their brood. During this process, they pollinate the flowers of trees, shrubs,
fruits and vegetables. This helps everyone with a garden as well as many plants and trees in yards.
Where can people find you most out and about in Dunwoody?
CH: We have lived in Dunwoody for over 40 years, and you can always find us at the Dunwoody Baptist Wellness Center or the Dunwoody Library. We enjoy eating at Village Burger, Vintage Pizza and Novo Cucina, and on special occasions, we love Seasons 52. Brook Run Park is another wonderful location for bees and we are often there.
Bee Warned
Hodges shares the phrase, “Not every bug is a bad bug,” borrowed from the UGA Department of Entomology, to heed the fact that practices like mosquito spraying or pesticide use can be deadly to pollinators. She encourages individuals to become educated on the products before spraying lawns and gardens.