Bee Education Field Trips

close up photo of beehive

Rhode Island College has been a home to honeybees for over 10 years! Our hives house about 40–50,000 bees each. With six hives across campus, the bees pollinate local plant life and the produce grown in our community garden. Thanks to the bees, our garden produces around 1,000 pounds of produce each year, about 200 pounds of honey, and school-age children from across the state visit RIC for bee education.

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Interested in a Bee Education Field Trip?

Buzz, our resident Bee expert, leads tours of our Bee Education Center, RIC Greenhouse and Community Garden. We invite individuals or groups to join us for an enriching, hands-on tour of the college’s green initiatives. Buzz is here to educate kids of all ages - with field trips customized according to student age and the timeframe your group has available.

Email Us to Schedule Today

Please Note: Each field trip should also schedule a rain date, as all field trips are dependent on weather. 

Preschool–Grade 3 Students

Learn about types of bees, roles of each bee in the hive, beekeeping tools and how keeps help earth! 

Grade 4–8 Students

Learn about the roles of bees as pollinators, how pheromones are used for communication and the waggle dance!

Grade 9–12 Students 

Learn about neonicotinoids and their effects on hives and agriculture, pollination and its use in our culture.

Educational Materials

If you're able to schedule a field trip with us, or if you're just looking to educate your students about bees, we provide materials for you.

Teaching Materials - Learn More About Bees

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Support the Bee Education Center

Please help us continue to educate the local community. The Bee Education Center Fund provides for any expenses relating to bee education - such as supplies, student stipends, research and instruction.

Teaching Materials

General Information on Bees

Honeybees are social insects and live together in hives which may contain thousands of bees. A honey bee hive is like a complex society. Each individual has a job and together the bees all contribute so that the hive thrives. Each hive at RIC contains 40-50,000 bees. Within the hives, each bee works as part of a team to keep the hive functioning. The biology of honey bees relates to their behavior. Honey bees are classified as either worker bees, drones, or queens.

Worker Bees

Worker bees are females and help keep the hive in production. There will be thousands of workers and they hold many jobs. Worker bees care for the young, developing bees called larvae, and the queen bee. Worker bees also build hexagonal cells for the eggs and larvae, supply the hive with nectar, keep the hive clean, as well as cool in summer and warm in winter. As worker bees explore outside the hive, they collect nectar and pollen, water, and plant sap called propolis. These materials will be used for food resources and to fix damages in the hive.

Drone Bees

Within each hive there will be only a few hundred males called drones. Drone bees have one job: to mate with a queen bee. Directly after mating the drone will die. While waiting to mate, the drones will live in the hives and be taken care of by the worker bees. Although drones are larger than the female workers, they must rely on them for protection because drones lack stingers.

Queen Bee

A hive will have a single queen bee who lays all the eggs in the hive. She is larger than the rest of the workers and drones and is selected as the queen by being fed a special food, called royal jelly, when she is a developing larva. Her job is to lay eggs, up to 1,500 per day, and go off to find drones to mate with. She will travel far outside the hive to reduce chances of mating with a drone from her own hive. This helps prevent poorly developed bees from being born and damaging the system. She will typically live for two years. After her death, a new queen is chosen. In hives, the queen will be marked with paint to keep track of her whereabouts.​​​

Looking to Learn More?

2011

Anthropology professor Dr. Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban visited University of California- Davis campus bee research facility. She was intrigued with the use of honeybees on campus and wanted to start a program for Rhode Island College, focusing on honeybee research and bee education.

2012

Bee Education Center
Dr. Geoff Stilwell, Jim Murphy, and Dr. Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban
  • With approval and heavy support of previous RIC President Dr. Nancy Carriuolo, three hives and beekeeper protective gear were donated by the Rhode Island Bee Association (RIBA).
  • Betty Mencucci and RIBA began using RIC campus to teach a basics of beekeeping class.
  • Jim Murphy, Sustainability Coordinator, took over the hives after Dr. Fluehr-Lobban and her husband Dr. Richard Lobban’s retirement. Both continue to support the hives with supplies and advocacy today.
  • Ed Lafferty and members of RIBA, along with Jim Lawson, State Bee Inspector for the Department of Environmental Management (DEM), assist in the caretaking of the hives.

2014

Bee Education Center
  • DownCity Design, a non-profit architectural and engineering group for high schoolers, built a storage and educational setup for field trips.
  • They built honey comb shaped storage with bee facts on the fronts that doubles as seating, a honeycomb shaped white board, and shed to keep the beekeeper gear.
  • Field trips are started for Henry Barnard Lab School on campus for preschool-elementary students. Word is spread and soon middle school and high school students from across Rhode Island are joining.
  • A study was started focusing on the Small Hive Beetle, a species of invasive beetle that is living in hives, stealing resources and killing hives across the east coast.
  • This grant funded project is continuing to be led by biology professor Dr. Geoff Stilwell.

2016

  • Dr. Frank Sánchez started his presidency and continued supporting the hives.
  • RIC served as a distribution point of queens in the RIBA/DEM “Queen Rearing” program.

2018

Teaching at the Bee Education Center
Students of all ages learn about the hives on campus, instructed by Jim Murphy
  • Studies are continuing about the SHB and many local students are learning the joys of beekeeping and how bees affect our environment.

2020

  • Field trips did not occur this year as a result of the pandemic.
  • The pandemic may have stopped students from coming to campus, but the bees kept on buzzing!

2023

Elementary school students at RIC Bee Education field trip
  • Field trips resumed allowing students from Ricci Middle School, St. Augustine Elementary, and Blackstone Valley Prep to meet the bees!

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Contact Us

James P. Murphy

Mr. James C. Murphy

Assistant Director of Facilities & Ops/Sustainability & Logistics