SC agriculture school expands award-winning beekeeping program

SC agriculture school expands award-winning beekeeping program



The night before South Carolina’s annual beekeeping conference and competition, high school students Savannah Smith and Garland Wilson sat in a hotel bathroom, picking bubbles out of jars of honey.

Smith, a senior, and Wilson, a junior, harvested the honey as part of the Governor’s School for Agriculture’s beekeeping club, using equipment donated to bolster the fledgling program. The two needed their jars to be perfectly pristine for the next day’s competition, where they would be two of the youngest people competing.

Panic set in when condensation from a shower caused the jars to fog up, and again when bubbles reappeared. The students rushed to wipe off all the watermarks and put the jars in a car overnight, hoping the bubbles would disappear.

“We went out the next day, and they were beautiful,” Smith said. “And then we got first (place).”



The students’ success at the July competition in Columbia, where they won half a dozen awards, shows the success of the year-old program, said instructor Susan Jones, an apiculture specialist who competed alongside her students.

“Getting these girls to the state conference was kind of a test case,” Jones said. “I really did not expect them to win. We were going as a learning experience. And the fact that they did so well is just very satisfying.”

In its second year, the program is set to expand, thanks to a donation.

Duke Energy provided $25,000 for state-of-the-art honey harvesting equipment and a honey house, which gives students a dedicated space to filter and jar their honey.

With 19 hives of honeybees, students will start making and selling their own beeswax products while continuing to make award-winning honey, Jones said.

Like with all courses at the agricultural school, known for centuries as John de la Howe, the goal is for students to recognize beekeeping as a viable career path, Jones said.

Smith and Wilson are already on their way to achieving intermediate certification, one step down from the master certification that separates hobby and commercial beekeepers, they said.

Beekeeping is an essential career not just to produce honey but to help farmers’ crops grow, Duke Energy spokesman Ryan Mosier said in an email. The donation came from the utility’s foundation, which focuses in part on climate resiliency, he said.

“Agribusiness is a top industry in South Carolina going back to the state’s beginnings, and this school is educating the next generation of those business leaders,” Mosier said.
Getting started

Neither Smith nor Wilson had any particular affinity for bees when they elected to start their own hives.

“I just heard it, and I was like, ‘I like outside. Bees are outside. Bees are good, apparently.’ So, I signed up,” Wilson said.

After a year of helping tend six hives, both earned their beginners’ certifications. At least once a week, they go out to their hives to check on the bees, making sure they show no signs of pests or diseases, Jones said.Bees perched on a glove at the Governor’s School for Agriculture. (Provided/Garland Wilson)

The program got off to a rough start. Jones tried to start the program in 2021, after giving several guest lectures on beekeeping.

The school’s teachers had too much on their plates to properly instruct the students on how to care for the hives, and the school couldn’t find any volunteers in rural McCormick, so none of the bees survived over the winter.

Jones, a former president of the South Carolina Beekeepers Association, tried again in 2024, after coming onto the staff as an instructor. After a successful first year, the school’s aviary expanded to 19 hives this school year.

Each hive can produce between four and nine gallons of honey, Jones said.

“When you start doing that math, that’s going to be a lot of honey for this next year,” she said.

The program isn’t all about honey, though. Honey is a great byproduct, but the real value comes from teaching students about pollination. The students also look after bumblebees, which don’t produce honey, at the campus’ greenhouse.

“If you want something from the bees, it’s one thing,” Smith said. Non-native honey bees are the best at making honey and other byproducts, “but if you’re talking about, ‘Save the bees,’ let’s talk native bees.”

After normal classes finished every day, Smith and Wilson joined several classmates in walking out to a classroom in the woods with their notebooks and pencils. There, Jones lectured for about two hours at a time.

The knowledge shows. Smith and Wilson know about the origins of different bees, how they pollinate and how that affects the environment.

Both are certified beekeeping apprentices, and both are on their way to moving up to the intermediary level, which is a rare feat for teenagers, Jones said.
Award-winning honey

Already, the students have a strong foundation, Jones said. That much was clear when Smith and Wilson took home first-place prizes at the South Carolina Beekeepers Association conference in July.Savannah Smith pours honey into a jar at the Governor’s School for Agriculture. (Provided/Susan Jones)

Wilson walked away with first-place ribbons in novice honey and dark honey, as well as a third-place accolade for photography. Smith scored runner-up in novice honey, first place in amber honey and fifth place in black jar, which judges decide based on taste alone.

The awards are based not on a ranking system but on whether the honey meets a certain standard, Jones said.

A category could have multiple first-place winners or none at all. In this case, scoring first place meant the students made the honey as good as it could be, she said.

At nearly every turn, Smith and Wilson were the youngest people in the room.

“Everyone was like, ‘Oh my goodness,’ and they’d never seen us before, so they were like, ‘Where did they come from?’” Smith said.

This year, the students feel good about their odds.

Different parts of campus produce different tastes and colors of honey, since the bees pollinate different flowers and trees. Smith, in particular, plans to graduate with a big win. She has a hive in the woods that she thinks is making “the most natural honey under the sun,” she said.

With the donated equipment, the students can collect beeswax as well, which they can turn into any number of items, which Jones calls “lotions and potions.” Students will be able to submit candles, soap or lip balm for consideration at next year’s conference.

Next up is the South Carolina State Fair in October. The students plan to clean up any problems they had at the conference over the summer to perfect their jars of honey.

“More late nights in the bathroom,” Smith said.