Everywhere you look on Trinity’s campus, there’s nature. From petting the Trinicats to enjoying the campus’s various green spaces, students have many options to fulfill their outdoor needs. However, two clubs — Bee Club and Gardening Club — go even further by building a community around that environment.
In 2014, a group of students with an interest in beekeeping started the Trinity Bee Club in hopes to start beekeeping on campus. They aimed to put what they learned about beekeeping into practice.
Although there are currently no bees on campus in captivity, the club is always looking for bee-related activities to fill their meetings. Sam Muschenheim, sophomore accounting and Spanish double-major and president of Bee Club, explained what they do without the bees.
“Each event we do is a bit different,” Muschenheim said. “We’ll watch a bee documentary, and lots of times we will do crafts and stuff like that.”
Next semester, Bee Club is partnering with Johnny D’s Bees to hopefully bring beekeeping and observations of bees back to campus. Along with bringing bees back to campus, Bee Club plans on touring Johnny D’s hives.
Bee Club isn’t the only way to engage with the on-campus environment. Trinity’s Gardening Club also offers hands-on opportunities to cultivate communal produce. Autumn Schmitt, sophomore classical studies major and officer of Gardening Club, described the ways the club is trying to improve next semester, such as volunteer days and getting more people involved with the gardens around campus.
“We are trying to get more people involved in the garden that aren’t in the Gardening Club or the class itself,” Schmitt said.
A group of students started Gardening Club in 2011, missing their own gardens at home and wanting to grow their favorite crops to harvest and eat.
“Psychologically, they really enjoyed the process of making something and enjoying it,” Schmitt said.
Most of Gardening Club’s meetings take place over the weekend, so to increase accessibility, anyone can join via Zoom. The in-person meetings typically take place in the Center for Sciences and Innovation. They meet to discuss problems within their on-campus garden and what each member’s personal project with the garden is looking like.
Both of these clubs typically have an average of five people for each meeting, but they hope to bring in more people throughout the upcoming semester. Don’t let the low turnout number fool you though, both groups have many people in their community with Bee club having over 160 members on their GroupMe, so there’s always an interest surrounding our environmental clubs. To get involved with both clubs, join the official Bee Club GroupMe and email [email protected] to be involved with the community gardens on campus.
