The Huneebee Project in New Haven, Connecticut, trains teenagers to be beekeepers — teaching skills they can take to other jobs, and providing a therapeutic setting for them to work through hardship and trauma.
Teens in the program say the four month weekend program helps them work through their fears and experience the healing sounds, smells and textures of the natural world.
For Alex Guzman, who became Huneebee’s junior beekeeping instructor after completing the program several years ago, beekeeping changed the course of her life.
“When I stopped going to therapy I not only had a support system, I had ways to go about my ‘brain worms’ as I like to call them,” Guzman said. “The thing with beekeeping is that you have to get in the moment … I’ve been able to approach things more clearly.”
Watch Connecticut Public’s Mini Doc to learn more about one of the first therapeutic beekeeping programs for teens in the country.
