Our Story, Vision, & model
Huneebee Project was started in 2018 by a clinical social worker and beekeeper. Since then, we’ve graduated eight cohorts from our 15-week Beekeepers in Residence therapeutic job skills training program and educated over 2,000 children and adults on the importance of pollinators. We presently maintain 40 honey bee colonies and over 20 pollinator-friendly garden plots across nine sites in New Haven and Bridgeport. Sites are developed and maintained by local youth, who are employed in positions ranging from garden site managers and operations assistants to bee apprentices and peer instructors.
We value showing up as your authentic self, communication in all its forms, respect for yourself and others, and ownership of your work and actions. Our decisions, behaviors, and relationships operate within a trauma-informed and anti-racist framework.
Proceeds from marketplace sales, CSA flower subscriptions, and sponsorships fund installation of beehives and pollinator habitat, employment of local youth, community-based workshops, and professional development services.
Our Vision
Huneebee Project envisions a world in which our youth, the community, and our environment are in mutual and collaborative relationship. Through a social enterprise that promotes transferable job-skill-building for youth, community engagement, and shared appreciation for our natural environment, we hope to see:
Teens and young adults who are future-oriented and can identify and feel confident in their unique interests and skills.
A community that feels empowered and engaged in our youths’ development and in being champions for environmental conservation.
A shared recognition of connection to nature as necessary, therapeutic, and one that can be achieved in your own kitchen or backyard - by lighting a beeswax candle, adding raw honey to a cup of tea, or planting a small, pollinator-friendly green space.
Our Model
We exist at the intersection of youth development, environmental conservation, and community activation.
Training and employment
Huneebee Project trains and employs youth in New Haven, Connecticut in beekeeping and the creative arts. We prioritize training and employing youth with past or present child protective and/or foster care involvement, because we know that, all too often, the child protective and foster care systems are under-resourced and can come with varying gaps in service. Gaps that can lead to exacerbating existing traumas or the introduction of new traumas. And gaps that can contribute to inadvertent perpetuation of systems of oppression and to inadequate attention to a variety of needs, including mental health and job skill training.
With Community
We work to involve our community in every step of the way, as we know that good things happen when we’re in relationship with one another. Community hive checks are hosted weekly throughout the spring and summer months as opportunities to educate our neighbors on sustainable beekeeping practices and the important role of honey bees and other pollinators.
In a therapeutic context
We believe beekeeping in itself is a therapeutic practice- one that requires awareness of your body in time and space, use of regulation strategies to maintain a calm presence in the midst of an open bee hive, and open, honest discussions about fear, loss, courage, and hope. At Huneebee Project, these healing aspects of beekeeping are combined with social work support, professional development workshops, and creative outlets to empower our youth. Youth install and maintain active honey bee hives and pollinator-friendly green spaces in vacant lots and gardens throughout the city, promote environmental conservation through education and example, and power a sustainable social enterprise through our marketplace.
To create a new system
We’re seeking to create a new, innovative system that highlights dignity, self-worth, and unique individual talent. A system that does its best to address and combat problematic power dynamics and structures such that youth are empowered to be leaders in the supply chain. In this space, we all serve together- and, together, we heal, we grow, and we share some sweet, sweet honey with you.
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