For a few years now, the Bowie Earth Club has been trying tirelessly to purchase some bees in order to teach a bee-keeping class as a branch off of FFA. Senior Lili Benitez is the reason that there are now bees on campus.

Benitez is known around the Bowie campus as the “bee kid” due to her constant attempts and passion over bringing bees to Bowie’s campus.

“One of the things I’ve essentially been trying to do in my four years here, is to get bees on campus for a class or an after school activity,” Benitez said. “I’m with the Earth Club and I thought it would be really cool if we got beehives and housed them by the farms.”

Some students may be a little apprehensive about being so close to bees since they can be pesky and sometimes sting, but not Benitez.

“I went to the Agricultural teacher Ms. Black the end of last school year because I had heard that she also really wanted bees,” Benitez said. “Miss Black had actually purchased all of the equipment to raise bees. She had suits and hives and everything, she just didn’t know where she could actually get bees.”

When Benitez found out that she was not the only person on the campus that day dreamed about acquiring bees, she started to get serious and began to track down someone she could get bees from.

“I remembered in middle school an organization came out and taught us how to bee-keep,” Benitez said. “So I contacted them regularly since they do educational outreach and worked out a plan to get bees at Bowie. They gave us a bunch of bees and now we check up on the hives that we have on the FFA farm all the time.”

The bees were donated by the American Honeybee Protection Agency that Benitez remembered learning from in middle school.

“I wanted bees on campus because they’re extremely important to the environment,” Benitez said. “And they’re also just really fascinating creatures and I’ve always been really interested in beekeeping.”

Benitez admits that wanting the bees on campus was selfish but believes that the good that the bees do for the earth is enough to balance out the selfishness.

“I mean it’s cool that there are bees on the farm and that students can learn to bee-keep and stuff but do we really need them?” freshman Kiara Gonzales said.

Buying bees when they are around campus isn’t logical to Gonzales.

“I mean, there’s enough bees in the trash cans all over campus, they seem to be thriving and there’s a gross amount,” Gonzales said. “It confuses me on why someone would want more of them.”

Most students on campus have no idea about the bees being raised on the farms but the ones who do either strongly support it or strongly oppose it.

“Personally I don’t think the bees should be raised like that,” freshman Lauren Munoz said. “They’d probably be happier and be doing greater things for the environment if they weren’t being raised in captivity.”

Living in captivity does not actually affect the  way the bees live because they have all been reported as healthy and strong by Benitez.

“It doesn’t affect me and I guess I don’t really have an opinion on the Bowie bees,” Gonzales said. “As long as the bees stay off campus on the farm minding their own business, I’ll be happy.”

Even though Thomason doesn’t believe in animals living in captivity he does agree that Benitez’ dream come true about having bees on campus is pretty fantastic.

“I’m happy that she got what she worked so hard for,” Munoz said. “She spent all four years of high school pushing for bee hives and she got it and I think that’s awesome.”

The goal of having bees on the Bowie campus is to provide a way to be educated on their anatomy and how to properly care for them.

“I love the bees and words can’t describe how excited I’ve been about finally obtaining them,” Benitez said. “I’m glad that students will continue to get to learn about the bees next year and in the many years that follow.”