School and Community Fall 2022

Member Profile: Della Bell-Freeman BY PEYTON ROBERTS AND DAVIN AHUJA, COMMUNICATIONS INTERNS W hile the world around us was shutting down and we all adjusted to new norms like

a well-established hobby,” Bell-Freeman said. “I became interested after we moved to this part of the state. Our property is a fantastic location for beekeeping so I thought, ‘why not try it out?’” The first step was talking to a local expert – an employee at Nixa Hardware. She would visit him most Saturdays to get his recommendations and soak up any information he had to share. She then read articles and books, watched videos and learned from others who had previous experience with beekeeping. “What I learned is that there are lots of approaches to beekeeping. The bee expert I spoke with takes a simplistic approach and that has inf luenced how I manage my bees,” Bell-Freeman said. This hobby came naturally because, she claims, educators and beekeepers need

social distancing, Della Bell-Freeman was adjusting to a different kind of routine – taking care of bees. “My bees arrived in the spring during the onset of COVID and gave me something other than the pandemic to fill my mind.” Bell-Freeman started with two ‘nucs’ of bees. For those of us who aren’t as privy to insect terminology, ‘nucs’ are small bee colonies created from larger colonies housed within the boxes that are usually thought of when picturing beekeeping. She started with 10,000 bees in her first nuc, but this number quickly grew into 50,000 bees split between two hives. “In southwest Missouri, bee-keeping is

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