My boyfriend has been interested in bees and beekeeping for over a year and has assisted three different local beekeepers in his spare time to learn more about the craft. We have been hoping to have our own bees in the future and when we heard that the University of Illinois Pollinatarium was hosting classes where we could make our own bee hive boxes, I knew that this would be a great opportunity for us to learn more.
Before learning about these classes, I honestly didn’t even know that the University of Illinois had a Pollinatarium available for us to visit. According to their website, “the University of Illinois Pollinatarium is the first free-standing service science center in the nation devoted to flowering plants and their pollinators. Why is this important? Most terrestrial life on Earth depend on pollination for survival which makes pollinations a key process that sustains all types of communities. Because so much depends on pollination, the UI Pollinatarium is dedicated to increasing awareness and appreciation of pollination as a remarkable ecological partnership and an essential ecosystem service.”
We were the first to arrive on a Friday evening at 6:30 p.m. If you were like us and had never been to the U of I Pollinatarium before, it is a little difficult to see as it is back on a dirt trail in the woods. We missed the entrance the first time and had to turn around and go back to it. Once we got back on the trail, we followed it in the back of the woods and saw many bee hive boxes, like the ones we would soon be building, on our way to the Pollinatarium.
Once we arrived, we spoke with Lesley Deem, the coordinator of the event, and signed in. We were also told that we could choose between 8-inch wide or 10-inch wide frames and that are medium or deep in height. Mediums were $12, and deeps were $15 for the cost of materials. We decided to make 10-inch wide and deep frames.
When the rest of the attendees for the event arrived, Deem had us sit down and talked to us about the importance of bees and what is required to build a full bee hive box. She was extremely detailed and went over each component that is required to have healthy bees. She even passed out beekeeping magazines that showed us more information about the beehive components and what we should order to finish our bee hive boxes. Though my boyfriend had been around beekeepers and helped them before, even he learned some new things from Deem that he hadn’t known before. We were thoroughly impressed with her knowledge and expertise.
I originally thought that we might be cutting the wood ourselves and using more tools, but the frames were already cut to fit together and all we had to do was use a hammer to nail them together and in place. It was good that there were two of us to work together and make our boxes since one of us had to hold them in place and the other had to hammer in the nails. It was a fun experience to make the boxes together as a couple and work together as a team. One couple that attended the event with us brought their children along and had a lot of fun making four bee hive boxes together as a family.
Over all, we really enjoyed our experience of building our bee hive boxes at the University of Illinois Pollinatarium. Lesley Deem was incredibly helpful and answered every question that we had for her about what we would need to finish our boxes and how we can eventually have our own bee hives. She even let us keep the beekeeping magazines so that we could have all the information on hand and be able to order the future components and products that we would need to get started on our beekeeping experience.
If you are interested in learning more about bees and beekeeping or would like to attend a bee hive build in the future, I highly recommend it! We learned a lot in a short amount of time which made for a fun and educational date night. Working with our hands and seeing something we “built,” or even just put together, in its finished form was fun too. I think individuals, couples and families would enjoy this experience as much as we did.
The University of Illinois Pollinatarium is located at 606 W. Windsor Road in Urbana. It is open 1:30-4:30 p.m. on Saturdays and available on weekdays (Tuesday through Friday) by appointment only. It is closed on Sundays and Mondays.
All photos by Brittany Busboom.