Faculty and staff anticipated an smooth start to the 2015-16 school year, but that just wasn’t to be(e)! On Friday, August 21, Head of Middle School Charles Hagy was alerted told of  a humongous bee’s nest in one of the trees outside of the Middle School Office. “Last Thursday a parent was going up to watch his son’s football practice and saw the bees so he came and showed me the beehive,” explained Hagy. “My first thought is always the safety of my students, staff, and parents. We have several people who have acute allergies to bees. My second thought was how can we remove the hive without killing the bees because bees are essential and important to the food chain and environment,” Hagy continued.

Mr. Hagy said that there’s never been a situation such as this at the Middle School, which may explain why some people didn’t know how serious the situation actually was. “At first I thought it was a joke but later I realized it was very serious,” said Dean of Students Mr. Jeffrey Cavallo.

Because The Benjamin school is a green school of excellence (and it has a compassionate administration), the goal was to remove the bees unharmed. However, after consulting with Alpine Farms, the company Benjamin called upon to remove the hive, the bee removers deemed it impossible to save the bees. According to Rooney Charpton, the owner of Alpine farms, the honey bees were too far into the tree to extract them. As a result, the company had to terminate them. However, the campus is now safe again and there shouldn’t be(e) any more concern about students getting stung in the Middle School.