One-BEEing, Hartford is a city-wide collaboration, overseen by Knox, Inc., in partnership with Community Solutions, Hartford Food Systems, Grow Hartford, the Keney Park Sustainability Program, Rise Up, Summer of Solutions, Blue Earth Compost…. and YOU! These partnerships will allow us to mount large scale community engagement towards natural beekeeping, effectively increasing the overall capacity of our partner organizations, increasing the health of our local honeybee population and local flora, as well as encouraging the relationship building and supportive networks that lead to vibrant communities across our city. It is never too early to introduce the next generation to the importance of working together and environmental awareness. The One-BEEing Hartford campaign takes a natural, organic approach to beekeeping with a biodynamic influence, treating soil fertility, plant growth, Human stewardship and Honeybee care as ecologically interrelated tasks.
We have established two of our projected four hives within the city, will use the funds we raise to purchase safety equipment for our participants, as well as the gardening tools and seeds we will need to begin planting our bee-friendly habitats throughout the community.
We will also begin conducting regular workshops and meetings with our project participants and the community. We will reach out to the local schools to begin pollinator programs, raise butterflies in the classrooms, to be released into our pollinator gardens.
By next Spring we want to begin harvesting honey and pollen, introducing our participants to entrepreneurship and cooperative economics!
Connecticut lost over 40% of its bee hives last year, we want to raise awareness of this fact and the importance of the honeybees to our food supply. We also want to use our efforts to and the metaphor of the bee hive to foster collaboration throughout our city, to promote collective work and responsibility.
We believe that our program takes a very holistic approach to fostering environmentalism, food justice, community building and sustainability, driven by the community itself.