The Maynard Honeybee Meadow Queen Naming

When we were crowdfunding to create the meadow, back in October of 2016, the reward for a one thousand dollar donation was the honor of naming the queen when the bees arrived. Yieldbot, www.yieldbot.com was very generous and made that donation to support the meadow.

When the time came to plan for naming the queen, Yieldbot decided to have us collect ideas from the community and then pick one name at random. On our Facebook page, we collected name ideas through the month of March. There were about fifteen names that people had suggested. We planned a Queen Naming Ceremony in the meadow on Earth Day.

When the day finally arrived for the ceremony, the weather was beautiful. There was some concern of rain early in the week, but it was sunny and warm. There was a good turn out and everyone was excited to name the queen. The bees had been installed the Tuesday before and they were adjusting nicely.

I started the event with going over the expectations of the meadow. People are asked to stay off of the planted areas and only walk on the paths. Respecting the bees was an important topic for me to cover. I let people know that they should not swat at the bees, but walk away. A big issues that had to be discussed was asking everyone to please pick up after themselves and their dogs. When we were cleaning out and preparing the meadow their was a lot of dog mess left on the ground.

There is a group in town that paints rocks and hides them throughout the town. There have been lots of rocks in the meadow, but some of them have been in the areas where we don’t want people walking. I reminded everyone about using the paths to hide the rocks and staying off of the planted areas. It has been really fun to see all of the rocks that have been hidden in the meadow over the last year.

Soon there will be a little lending library in the meadow. The books in the meadow will be about bees, beekeeping, and gardening for bees. The one thing that we ask of people borrowing the books is that they return them to the library in the meadow when they are done. The hope is that many people can continue to enjoy the books and learn about bees. There are informational books and fiction books for children and adults.

Once everything that needed to be said had been said, it was time to choose a name for the queen. Richard Shea, the CTO of Yieldbot, was the one to draw her name. All of the name ideas were written onto paper and put into a beekeeping veil. Richard drew a piece of paper out and read out her new name. The queen in the hive at the meadow is named Beeopatra.

After the queen’s name was chosen, I offered to answer any questions that people had. There were a couple of kids that had some questions for me. Then everyone lingered around enjoying the weather and the baked goods from The Compulsive Baker. The ceremony turned out very well and I was pleased with the amount of people that came and enjoyed some time in the meadow. It is so nice to have created a space for all to come and enjoy.