Champlain Apiary Buzzes With Experiential Learning

“Hometown Honey | Champlain Apiary delivers a delicious educational experience” is a recent article featured in Seven Days, Vermont’s independent weekly newspaper.

The Champlain College Apiary is nestled next to the Metz Studio Barn, attracting visits from many local organizations for opportunities of experiential learning.

“Visitors who enter it walking west descend into a hollow brimming with native perennials such as milkweed, bergamot, lobelia, hyssop, butterfly weed, coneflower, beardtongue, goldenrod, aster and phlox,” reads the Seven Days article. “The hollow is known as the Perry Pollinator Garden, and it sustains an even greater treasure: the honeybees of Champlain Apiary. Their trove? Wildflower honey.”

Founded by associate professor Kristin Wolf, the apiary is a hidden gem on our Burlington, Vermont, campus and often visited by students in our Core curriculum and social innovation classes.

“Wolf’s work is methodical, hypnotic and astonishingly rich in sensory input. Hundreds of bees enveloped her in a slow-motion cyclone of activity, buzzing more loudly in response to the occasional puff of sweet smoke,” the article reads.

“You come in here, and there is no sense of time,” Wolf said.

The apiary is more than just a collector of honey; it’s a connector of community. Local organizations and school youth groups make their way to campus each year to explore the haven. Champlain Education major Hayden Coy ’24, who works at the Boys & Girls Club in Burlington and was a student of Wolf’s, recently brought a group of middle schoolers to the apiary for a heightened educational experience.

“I took the kids there because I knew how smart Kristin is. I found myself always captivated by the things she said,” Coy said to Seven Days. “I knew the kids would be, as well. They really listened to every word and kind of just ate it up.”