Students add beekeeping, honey collection to their studies at Zachary High

Students add beekeeping, honey collection to their studies at Zachary High



When Zachary High’s agriculture students learned they’d be studying bees firsthand, they weren’t so sure about it.

They worked with chickens and goats, raised vegetables and flowers and tended fruit trees, but bees?

“The students were a little scared,” said Melissa Brumbaugh, who with her husband, Bubba Brumbaugh, teaches the Zachary High ag classes. “Now they say, 'Can we please go to the bees?'”




Zachary High students, from left, Savannah Franklin and Melissa Nolan, check the frames in a beehive. The beekeeping program at the school started in 2023 with a state grant. PROVIDED PHOTO

The study of bees took flight at the high school in 2023, after it applied for and received a $10,000 grant from the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry that provided bees, hives, beekeeping suits, hoods, gloves and classroom books.



The 25 juniors and seniors who take the classes, either as a required science or an elective, have become experienced beekeepers since then. Every month they check on the six beehives that are kept on the nearby campus of Port Hudson Academy and collect honey twice a year for the students to bottle and hand out at school district events.




The name of the honey is “Z-Hive Honey,” a name voted on by the Zachary community.

“We talked about selling it, but we don’t want to compete with local beekeepers,” said Joseph Bassett Jr., a student in the program and a junior at Zachary High. “We give it out at everything we go to.”





Teacher Melissa Brumbaugh speaks during an interview at Zachary High School on Thursday, February 13, 2025.Javier Gallegos

This year, a second, $10,000 grant awarded to the school from the Louisiana Department of Education will boost the number of hives to 11, allowing sophomores to take part in the program too, Melissa Brumbaugh said.

“We’ll start getting those students involved now, so the subject isn’t brand-new next school year,” she said.

Melissa Brumbaugh will teach about bees in the classroom, but the experienced beekeeper juniors and seniors will help teach the sophomores in the field how to check the hives for unwelcome insects and make sure the queen bees and hives look healthy.






“I truly think kids learn better from each other,” she said.

Even the students are excited about passing the torch.



Zachary High students, from left, Audrey Mitchem, Savannah Franklin and Kaylea Marionneaux, are among the 25 students getting classroom instruction and hands-on experience with beekeeping, in the program started in 2023 with a state grant. A second grant the school received this year will expand the program. PROVIDED PHOTO

“For me, being a senior and leaving, it’s great to know there are people coming in behind me," said Kaylea Marionneaux, a student in the beekeeping program who will graduate from Zachary High in May.

This year’s grant funds will also provide participating schools with an extractor, a piece of equipment that spins a hive’s removable frames, where bees build their honeycombs, to extract the honey.




Meanwhile, Zachary High has been able to borrow an extractor from a student’s grandfather.

“Beekeeping is an expensive hobby, but it’s so beneficial for our planet and the environment,” Melissa Brumbaugh said. “The students have become advocates for bees.”





The queen bee of the hive is marked with a white dot, middle right, made by a paint pen to easily be able to spot it at Janway Farms on Wednesday, March 12, 2025.Javier Gallegos

Mike Strain, commissioner of the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry, said the grants are funded by federal monies that first became available to Louisiana high schools in 2019, with the aim of enhancing the competitiveness of specialty crops and encouraging the long-term growth of the beekeeping industry.



Like the students at Zachary High, the schools were “reluctant at first, because it was bees,” said Strain, who is a beekeeper himself.

Covington High School was the first school to break the ice and apply for the 2019 grant, Strain said. Since then, students at nine other Louisiana high schools, including Zachary’s, have become bee experts, he said.

“They’re learning about bees from A to Z,” Strain said.





Teacher Melissa Brumbaugh walks past the gardens during a tour of the Ag department at Zachary High School on Thursday, February 13, 2025.Javier Gallegos

Zachary High has another bonus for its bee program: The expertise of volunteers Vaughn and Sienna Benoit, who have worked with bees for many years.



Melissa Brumbaugh reached out to the Benoits, the grandparents of Zachary High graduate Claire Chandler — who’s now studying animal science in college — and asked if they might be available to help coach the students on-site at the hives.

“Sure,” said the Benoits, now called Pop and Mimi by the students.



Vaughn Benoit, shown here with a frame of bees, and his wife Sienna Benoit, have volunteered with Zachary High beekeeping students since 2023, when the program began. The students call the couple, who have many years of experience with bees, Pop and Mimi.PROVIDED PHOTO

The Benoits meet the students at the hives every month at the Port Hudson Academy campus, where the hives have plenty of room, undisturbed, on a big field where there's a water source and wildflowers growing.

“The students are very attentive,” Sienna Benoit said. “It’s amazing what they can do.”






Vaugn Benoit noted that the students are learning a valuable skill. They are able to take what they learn and make a product out of it.

“We need future beekeepers,” Sienna Benoit said. “If we get just one beekeeper out of this group, it’s one more than there would have been.”