After helping to spruce up the campus with wildflowers and grasses last year, students with Southwestern Michigan College’s Ag Club are preparing to roll up their sleeves and really get down to bees-ness this spring.

The college program is once again partnering with members of Cass County Pheasants Forever to install a pair of beehives in a 6.5-acre garden located on the edge of the Dowagiac campus later this year. Members of the ag club will help install and maintain the honeybee colonies, with the assistance of Cassopolis beekeeper Joe Calme, who has purchased the insects and hives with funds from the county conservation organization.

Calme and CCPF President Jeff Nelson met with the students last week to talk about the project, which is intended to familiarize students with beekeeping and why maintaining a healthy population of pollinating insects is important to local ecology, Nelson said.

“Beekeeping was once done mainly to produce honey,” he said. “However, we are realizing now, with the recent decline of bees and other pollinators, that they are much more important as a pollinator than they are as a producer of honey.”

Nelson and Pheasants Forever first teamed up with the SMC Ag Club last year.

The organization purchased and planted seeds for wildflowers such as sunflowers, black-eyed-susans and goldenrods, as well as for trees like wild plums, crabapples and dogwoods, designed to attract bees and butterflies to campus. Students with the ag club helped out with the project, and secured grant money to help pay for the project.

After hearing about the project, Calme — who paid Pheasants Forever to plant wildflowers at his property last year — decided to reach out to Stacey Rocklin, the advisor for the ag club, to see if the college could install some bees to take advantage of the new habitat.

Calme also met with the CCPF board, who agreed to fund the project. The organization will spend around $1,000 on the insects, hives and other equipment, Nelson said.

The honeybees are expected to arrive around the end of April, at which point Calme and the students will help tend to them.

“The students are excited to see the hives come in, so whatever opportunities they have to get involved I’m sure they will take it,” Rocklin said.

Between five to 12 students attend the ag club’s monthly meetings, Rocklin said. On top of the collaboration with Pheasants Forever, the club helps build connections between the students and people currently working agriculture as well as gives members a chance to visit local farms and other sites, Rocklin said.

Pheasants Forever hopes to expand its partnerships with other entities in the county as well in the future, including with Cassopolis’ Camp Friedenswald, to help promote the spread of pollinators in the area, Nelson said.

“We want to build more awareness, not just with students but with the community in general,” he said. “Our county is built on agriculture, and so much of what we grow relies on pollinators. They are creatures we cannot live without.”

People interested in working with Pheasants Forever may contact Nelson at (574) 522-6595.