Waxing Poetic: Build Her a Story at ETON ~ Chagrin Blvd. SUMMER MEMORIES SCHOOL PHOTOS • FAMILY PHOTOS Framed Memories are the BEST GIFTS – For You, or Someone Else. Stop In Today! SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL BUSINESSES 13429 Cedar Road • Cleveland Heights • 216-397-7671 www.woodtraderframing.com • M-F 10-6 • Sat 10-5 Charms and chains beginning at $24. Great gifts for birthdays, bat mitzvahs and anniversaries. 28699 Chagrin Blvd. • 216-831-4444 Mon. ~ Sat. 10 to 6:30 • Sun ~ noon to 5 www.mulhollandsachs.com GIFTS FOR ALL OCCASIONS Local Beekeeper Amalia Haas Busy as a Bee Beachwood beekeeper Amalia Haas has been busy as a bee getting ready for the fall honey harvest that precedes Rosh HaShanah and gearing up for the honeybee-themed programs she brings to local schools, community organizations and businesses. Haas’s business achieved some significant milestones this year. At the Hazon Jewish Food Conference, she gave talks on her research about Judaism and beekeeping and her STEM literacy Jewish Beekeeping curriculum, called “The Devorah Project.” (Devorah means bee in Hebrew.) Haas’s business, HoneyBeeJewish/HoneyBeeLocal, was one of 13 out of 75 businesses selected to participate in the NEO SEA Change accelerator and pitch competition. SEA Change provides coaching and connections to innovators who seek to move an idea from concept to successful social enterprise. “As an educator and performer, the business incubator experience was incredibly valuable. Cleveland has so many resources for entrepreneurs. As a result of what I learned about fiscal projection and goal setting, I look forward to growing the number of educational programs provided and building a business that educates about the importance of sustainable land use and pollinator protection,” Haas told us. “Most of all, I enjoy building programs that inspire amazement, fun and fascination around the hive.” Other milestones included: supplying honey to the Agnon School for its fall fundraiser; writing “A Honey of A Megillah,” which tells the story of Purim from the honeybees’ perspective on the Purim story; participating in the Jewish Federation’s Day of Volunteering, by bottling honey and other activities with teens; and her most prized milestone – cutting open a barn wall with a buzz saw, from a scaffold 20 feet off the ground, to remove a honey bee colony and its comb, on her own. Haas says that those bees are now happily ensconced in a hive next to her home on Beachwood Blvd. Haas looks forward to working with children during this fall with programs that include HandsOn Honey!, BeeHive Yourself: Your Classroom as a Beehive, Honey Straws n’ Pollinator Seed Balls – for a Sweet and More Flowerful New Year, and her Honey-Tasting Workshop. This year, Haas looks to partner with community gardens, schools, and nonprofits to create educational apiaries (bee yards) that will provide the wider community with opportunities to learn about bees. She welcomes inquiries from interested parties. Ultimately, she would love to see an educational honey house that would provide a space for extracting honey and teaching about sustainable land stewardship and food production. Such a facility could be portable, but given the pivotal role of honey and food in the Jewish tradition, she says, an east side location would make sense. “I can see every Jewish institution visiting that honey house every year,” says Haas. “The Beachwood community has been so supportive of the bees,” says Haas. Businesses and community organizations have brought Haas in to teach, and some have replaced areas of turf on their property with flowering perennials to help sustain bees and other critical pollinators. Haas is selling local raw honey for the Jewish holiday season. To organize a program with HoneyBeeJewish or to order honey, visit www.HoneyBeeJewish.com, email HoneyBeeJewish@gmail.com, or call 330.552.8BEE. Businesses and community organizations have brought Haas in to teach, and some have replaced areas of turf on their property with flowering perennials to help sustain bees and other critical pollinators. 48 Beachwood Buzz n September 2015