From Princeton to White House, sharing a love of bees

At 6:30 a.m. Friday morning, 21 students piled into a rented school bus and took off for Washington, D.C., for a visit to the White House beehives, hoping to run into First Lady Michelle Obama ’85.

Members of the Princeton BEE Team — a student group formed in fall 2009 which maintains two beehives across from Carnegie Lake, tends them once a week and makes honey and lip balm — visited the hives outside the White House last weekend. These hives were added to the White House gardens in 2011, reportedly with the support of President Barack Obama, and now provide the honey used by the White House pastry chef.

"The best possible thing that could happen is that we meet Michelle, and we get to take a picture of her wearing one of our BEE Team jerseys," BEE team officer Hannah Safford ’13 said before the trip.

Though Safford was not able to attend the event herself, she said she helped organize the event. The BEE Team had been planning the trip since the beginning of the year, when Rocky Semmes ’79 decided to sponsor the organization with a $1000 donation.

"He heard the White House occasionally does tours of their beehive and their kitchen garden and asked if we wanted his help in arranging it," Safford said

BEE team member Dawn LaValle GS said the group did not fit the typical demographic visiting the beehives.

"Usually, they give the garden tours in the spring to school groups in the D.C. area and usually not to older people like us," LaValle said.

Safford said it was a "logistical headache getting people to the White House." She said the planners had to book the tour in advance and provide security officials with the Social Security numbers, dates of birth and proofs of citizenship for all 27 tour participants, including the six participants from the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area who met the Princeton group at the beehives.

LaValle said the tour had to go through two separate security checkpoints where they had to present government-issued identification.

LaValle noted that they were given badges to wear and were instructed to stay in a group and not to wander around the beehives. She said after clearing security, the group passed through the East Wing, which houses the office of the First Lady, and out to the back lawn.

"You go in, and it got quieter and quieter as you descend further into this very beautiful garden by the White House and further away from the loud, noisy street,” LaValle said. “No one else was on the lawn besides a few security officers. It was quiet, but very exciting. It felt like special access, seeing something people could not typically go into."

The White House beekeeper, Charlie Brandts, greeted the group. Brandts has been working at the White House for 27 years as a carpenter, he told the group, and used to keep bees at home. When the beehive opened with the gardens last year, he was asked to take over that responsibility as well.

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LaValle said Brandts could not tell them many of the details of why the hive was at the White House but did add that Michelle Obama supported the hives. Brandts added that President Obama was a bit more hesitant, saying that he was worried about the bees coming to his basketball court and stinging him.

After a visit to the hive itself, the group was met by White House pastry chef Bill Yosses, an apprentice to the beekeeper. Yosses told the group that he uses the honey in various recipes for White House meals.

Before leaving, LaValle said the group left gifts of honey and lip balm from the Princeton hive for all of the individuals they met on the tour, including Brandts and Yosses.

"We left a jar of honey and lip balm for Michelle as well," LaValle said. "Who knows if she will actually get them, but we thought it was a nice thing to do."