Own apiary: secondary school students learn from the buzzing object
Created: 05/21/2022, 12:00 p.m
By: Susanne Weiss
Outdoor classroom: teacher Anneliese Simon-Reitebuch (centre) keeps bees with her students in the museum garden.
© Sabine Hermsdorf-Hiss
The Geretsrieder Realschule runs its own apiary: Eight students take care of the bees in the museum garden.
Lessons are fun for everyone.
Geretsried – A brimstone butterfly lands on a rich yellow dandelion, the birds are chirping, it smells like summer: In the middle are teacher Anneliese Simon-Reitebuch and eight high school students.
Once a week, a trip to the museum garden in Geretsried is on her schedule.
That's where their bees live.
They're checking on you again this Tuesday afternoon.
The group has donned beekeeping smocks and hats and huddled over the terracotta-colored wooden box.
Simon-Reitebuch lifts the cover.
Felix blows in smoke from a kind of can to calm the bees.
It is working.
Although they fly around their stick, they make no attempt to sting the people dressed in white.
"The people are very good," says the teacher.
Bees in the museum garden: Realschule Geretsried has its own beekeeping
Since 2015, Simon-Reitebuch has offered beekeeping as an elective at the Realschule.
“I enjoy giving my students practical things to take with them,” she explains.
In addition to beekeepers, she teaches home economics, biology, mathematics and information technology.
She has always been interested in beekeeping, says the teacher.
"My grandfather was a beekeeper and I have a beautiful garden myself."
First, the school bees should get shelter on Adalbert-Stifter-Straße.
"But then it was too dangerous for us, so close to the school," reports Simon-Reitebuch.
A child could be allergic.
The city then offered the museum garden.
"It's ideal." The teacher brings the required material by car.
The students ride the one and a half kilometers on bikes.
"I organized them especially for the school beekeeping."
Pupils satisfied with the beehive in the museum garden
In this lesson, the girls and boys want to use the honey room.
"There are a lot of flowers there," explains Simon-Reitebuch.
Before Arne gets the wooden frame that the students prepared the previous week, the group looks at the honeycombs in the beehive.
The school actually has two colonies, but one is still standing in a tenth grader's garden, the teacher explains.
He used to take part in the elective course himself and is now a beekeeper himself.
He looked after the bees over the winter and now wants them to pollinate his fruit trees before they move.
Simon-Reitebuch now shows the fifth, sixth and seventh graders how to remove the combs.
Then you can try it yourself.
Everyone is focused.
"You can see where the sugar water is and where the honey is," says the teacher once.
On other combs she discovers three large humps.
"Look, they're going to be queens." Some of the wooden frames are lighter, some heavier.
The last one the students look at is the one they are particularly pleased with.
"It's a very beautiful brood," sums up the head beekeeper.
"Without bees, people would not survive"
The interest of the students in the elective is great.
“We help nature.
Without the bees, people would not survive,” they explain seriously.
They enjoy beekeeping and being in nature.
However, the beekeeping lessons do not always take place outside.
Of course, the children spin the honey in the kitchen, in winter they make candles or learn theory in the classroom.
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The school lesson flies by.
Lunch awaits the young beekeepers in the canteen.
They put in a new honeycomb frame and put the honey room on the hive.
Quickly but carefully so as not to crush any bees.
And then it's like, "Thank you for not getting stung."
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By the way: everything from the region is also available in our regular Wolfratshausen-Geretsried newsletter.