Young beekeepers: Cultivating honey and pollinator appreciation

“Bees are superorganisms. They all work together, and they can’t survive outside the hive,” explains Audrey McCollough. “It really surprised me that you treat a beehive like one functioning organism, just like a farmer would treat a cow. It’s the life of the whole you’re trying to help, not the life of the individual bee — and it was really cool to read about their unity.”

At 17 years old, McCollough has been keeping honeybees for more than a year — thanks to an annual youth scholarship from the Minnesota Hobby Beekeepers Association (MHBA).

Audrey McCollough received a full set of bee hardware and tools with her youth scholarship from the Minnesota Hobby Beekeepers Association.

Since 2007, the nonprofit has given away dozens of youth scholarships to aspiring beekeepers ages 12 to 17. “Our goal is to teach kids the art of beekeeping,” says Christine Shoemaker, MHBA board chair. “It’s an opportunity for youth to learn to appreciate honeybees and to become pollinator stewards, advocates and protectors in their communities.”

It’s just one of many programs that are connecting young people to honeybees for confidence, for conservation — and for the sweet, honey-filled joy of it. In New Haven, Connecticut, Huneebee Project has 40 bee colonies and 20 pollinator gardens managed by local youth in paid positions, from garden managers to peer instructors. Youth Bee Works Edenculture in Ohio installs hives in regional schools to teach kids about hive management, permaculture design and food systems. The Bee Cause Project, based in South Carolina, provides honeybee grants and education tools to schools in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico, sponsoring everything from rooftop hives to library books to pollinator habitats.

(Learn more about The Bee Cause Project and get tips for enjoying Pollinator Month and National Pollinator Week with kids.) 

While honeybees are not on endangered pollinator lists, they are subject to colony collapse, a disorder in which the majority of a colony’s worker bees disappear. Colony collapse is caused by a variety of factors, including pesticides, pathogens, climate change and lack of food or habit — and it’s a growing issue.

In 2024, commercial beekeepers in Minnesota, along with the rest of the U.S., experienced a 60-100% loss of their honeybee colonies due to colony collapse. Ongoing colony losses like this one could impact future food security, Shoemaker emphasizes, and that’s why it’s so important for youth to appreciate all that honeybees do for us. “A lot of fruit and vegetable crops, and foods like almonds and coffee, rely on honeybees for production,” she says. “Without them, we wouldn’t be able to have those foods in our diet regularly or at all.”

McCollough designed and hand-painted her bee boxes.

Audrey McCollough has always had a lively appreciation for insects. As a younger child, she lived in Colorado, where backyard livestock like bees were prohibited. Instead, she kept praying mantises and butterflies in her bedroom. “One time, all the crickets for the praying mantises escaped and found their way into my mom’s shower. She was not happy!”

McCollough’s family moved to Rochester, Minnesota, and in 2024, she applied for the year-long MHBA scholarship. Caring for bees is a big commitment of time and responsibility: Applicants submit an essay and a letter of recommendation, then take part in a panel interview.

Once McCollough was chosen, MHBA gave her a “nucleus colony,” consisting of a package of 7,000 or so bees, and all the equipment she needed to care for them, from the wooden hive to a bee suit and smoker. “I checked out so many books from the library, read all about beekeeping and got myself very excited,” she says. “Then I set up my hive, my dad picked up the bees — he said it sounded like a box fan in the back seat — and I put them in. It’s been a crazy year, but it’s been the most fun I’ve ever had.”

Founded in the 1960s, MHBA aims to promote better beekeeping through education. The nonprofit has more than 400 members, most of whom have a honeybee hive — or sometimes several hundred hives — in and around the Twin Cities of Saint Paul and Minneapolis. They’ve built a strong partnership with the University of Minnesota Bee Lab and Bee Squad, co-hosting monthly hive demonstrations and talks for members. And MHBA volunteers are out in the community teaching beekeeping workshops, mentoring new beekeepers and bringing bee booths and demo hives to schools and events, like the Minnesota State Fair.

During her scholarship, McCollough had access to college-level beekeeping courses from the UMN Bee Lab. She learned a lot of surprising things about bees. “I didn’t realize how special bees are,” she says. “They’re the only creatures besides humans to communicate abstract ideas. Bees do a little waggle dance that communicates, using the angle of the sun, where to fly to get flowers.”

MHBa requires youth beekeepers to share their honeybee knowledge and adventures by giving three public outreach presentations. McCollough spoke at her high school and local grade schools. “I loved talking about bees,” she says. “So I also decided to be a bee interpreter at the Minnesota State Fair. I just stood there and explained the observation hive behind me and answered bee questions for hours.”

A primary focus of MHBA and the scholarship is community mentorship. McCollough’s mentor, Bob Hinschberger, MHBA Treasurer and longtime beekeeper, came to check on the hive every month. On phone calls, he’d answer her many questions and work through challenges, like a mite infestation in the hive. “My bees had an infestation level of 11% — a fatal level is 2%, so we had to problem-solve,” she says. Her father borrowed a vaporizer from some beekeeping coworkers, and they treated the mites with formic and oxalic acids. “We were able to get the mite count down and successfully overwinter the bees — a huge success because a lot of Minnesota bee colonies don’t survive winter.”

As McCollough’s bees produced honey, she added more boxes to accommodate it. By the end of the season, she had harvested more than 200 gallons of honey.

In fact, McCollough’s honeybees did remarkably well. She lives on the edge of a forest so her bees had ample access to flowering trees, like basswood and linden, as well as ground clover. Her hive grew to be over 6 feet tall, and the bees produced 211 gallons of delicious, pale yellow honey. She made labels and gave jars of honey to friends and family, selling the leftovers for college money — and to buy a second hive.

As McCollough heads into her senior year of high school, she’s making plans to take a gap year between graduation and college. “I’m going to stick around for one more year, just to care for my bees,” she says. “It’s going to be hard to say goodbye.”

In the meantime, her younger brother has developed an interest in honeybees, and she’s slowly introducing him to the art and science of beekeeping. Her advice to him and all the young beekeepers? “Appreciate the bees, keep reading about them and don’t be afraid to get stung,” she says. “The more you get stung as a beekeeper, the less reaction you’ll have. So that’s the mindset I have when it hurts and it’s itchy: stick with it. It’s so worth it!”

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