When I first started thinking of what I wanted to do for my project, I knew two key things I wanted my project to have. I wanted to learn a new skill and produce something tangible. Through talking with friends, family, and teachers, I decided to do something relating to urban pollination efforts, specifically within New York City as it allowed me to work within my community. I initially thought I wanted to research the impact of urban pollination efforts in New York City, yet I realized I wanted to be actively participating and doing the pollination efforts rather than looking at their impacts. That lead me to brainstorm various pollination efforts I could partake in for my project. From there, I began to cut down and prioritize things that interested me more and that I felt were things I could accomplish. With the help of my mother, I made a month-by-month list of what I needed to get done in order to accomplish my main goals: learning how to beekeep, starting a beehive of my own, and planting a pollinator garden. I had other ambitions such as hatching butterflies, doing research, and creating a database for new beekeepers, yet I was focused on those three main goals.  In early winter, when I began working toward those goals, I realized it would be difficult to learn how to beekeep before March or April as hives are only active when the temperature is consistently above 60°. After talking with teachers and my family, it was suggested I reach out to beekeepers in Jamaica, where my grandmother lives, to hopefully learn how to beekeep down there while it was still cold in New York. That would lead me to reach out to my cousin, who used to beekeep in his free time, who set me up with a beekeeper in Jamaica, and I booked a ticket to go to Jamaica during my first March Madness week. To work towards my goal of starting a beehive I would begin to reach out to people to see if it would be possible to start a beehive on the high school roof, yet would eventually drop this goal due to the complicated logistics and unlikeliness of the goal. However, I pivoted and changed my goal to restarting the Bee Club that once existed and helping take care of the two hives that currently exist on the middle school roof. To, work towards my goal of starting a pollinator garden, I talked with Ms. Jackson about using one of the plots in front of the school for this garden. Once she graciously agreed to give me one of the plots of land, I began researching what native pollinators I could plant. 

During the first week of March Madness, I traveled to Jamaica to get hands-on experience with beekeeping and start learning how to beekeep. As mentioned before, I connected with long-time beekeepers, Andre and Jonathan Chuck. I would work with Andre and Jonathan in extracting and transporting a hive that had spawned in a tree in the garden of my grandmother's home. Andre and Jonathan both described the hive as, "the most difficult hive [they] have ever worked with," which was both daunting and exciting. Removing the hive was a three-day process which allowed me to gain loads of knowledge. The first step in the extraction was strategically cutting out parts of the tree (all while on a ladder). This took more than a day as not only was the wood thick, but the hive was much larger and deeper than expected. Which, made it difficult to find a good entry point to the hive without cutting down the entire tree. After a large enough whole was made, we began to extract honeycomb from the hive. This entailed spending hours reaching deep into the hive and blindly navigating the hive all while being cautious not to aggravate the bees more than we already had. Andre and Jonathan kept most comb they found with honey to sell, yet some was used to lure the bees into the hive box to transport. The honeycomb was placed into wood frames along with any comb containing brood, larvae, pollen, or any else that was vital to the hive's success after being transported. After the frame was filled with pieces of comb that were extracted, we wrapped string around the entire frame to keep the comb in place and then placed the frames into an enclosed box. This was not the last step, as due to the size of the hive and the aggression of the bees, we were unable to get all the hive and comb out. Therefore, we hammered wood panels into branches of the tree, which allowed us to place the box of frames next to the hive. We left the hive in that position overnight to allow the bees to migrate into the box and be ready for transport. The next day we took down the box from the tree and retrieved any more honeycomb we could as the hive was nearly empty of bees. Besides putting the box of bees into Andre's truck, I was unable to see more of the transportation of the bees as I had to catch a flight home, yet I still gained loads of knowledge. When I returned from the trip, I began working on a course called "Beekeeping Essentials" which is a 30-hour course offered online through Cornell University for new beekeepers. The course explains and teaches one how to start and manage a thriving and healthy beehive. While I was not able to work on much in my first week due to the weather, I was able to accomplish a lot and get a good base for my second week. 

In between the weeks of March Madness, I was able to continue working on the Cornell beekeeping course. I also researched plants that would not only be the most beneficial to pollinators in the area, but also that are  native to the region and that would thrive in the location of the box. After doing this research, I bought the seeds for the garden.

In the second week of March Madness, I hit the ground running. On Monday, I spent eight hours completing the "Beekeeping Essentials" course and received a certificate for it. In the following days, I worked on creating the Bee Club and other aspects of my project, yet spent most of my time planning and planting the pollinator garden with the help of my friend and classmate, Sydney R.D. who is pictured above. We would first have to clear the garden, which is located in front of the school building, of any trash and large rocks. To do this, we had to rake the soil, and then throw away as many pieces of plastic, cigarette buds, and other trash as we could. We then had to agitate the soil and loosen the soil that had been compacted over the winter. After I researched what each flower needed to successfully germinate after being sowed directly into the ground, Sydney and I were to start creating rows of soil to place the seeds in. In total, we had 22 rows which we spaced 12-18 inches apart using rakes and hoes. Due to the different needs of each plant, we cautiously had to make each row a different depth. We then placed the seeds into the rows, covered the seeds with soil, and placed signs that indicated which flower seeds were in each row. Finally, we watered the soil and left satisfied with our work.