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Former Inmates to Learn Beekeeping at Bronx Rooftop Apiary

By Eddie Small | October 7, 2014 7:26am
 The Osborne Association offers beekeeping courses for people who have been involved in the criminal justice system.
The Osborne Association offers beekeeping courses for people who have been involved in the criminal justice system.
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CLAREMONT — Beekeeping may be on its way to the roof of a former Bronx prison as part of an effort to transform the building into a center for the formerly incarcerated.

The Osborne Association, a group that has spent more than 80 years helping people involved with the criminal justice system return to society, is planning a range of skill-training programs, including construction, catering and beekeeping, as it prepares to turn the closed Fulton Correctional Facility into the Fulton Economic Development and Community Reentry Center.

"Specialized animal husbandry — such as beekeeping and dog-training programs — are being offered nationwide to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people to increase knowledge, skills and employability," Jonathan Stenger, director of communications at The Osborne Association, said in an email. "Some also argue for the therapeutic value of this type of skill-building and care-taking work."

 The Osborne Association's apiary at 809 Westchester Ave. may be joined by an apiary at the closed Fulton Correctional Facility.
The Osborne Association's apiary at 809 Westchester Ave. may be joined by an apiary at the closed Fulton Correctional Facility.
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Osborne Association

The organization already offers an eight-week Basic Urban Beekeeping course at 809 Westchester Ave. The course at 1511 Fulton Ave. would mimic that one.

The Westchester Avenue apiary contains four hives and about 300,000 honeybees, but the size of the Fulton Avenue beeyard has not yet been determined, Stenger said.

Although people taking the free course will not be paid, Osborne does eventually hope to develop a business from its beekeeping efforts in order to provide employment options for former inmates.

"A big hope for Fulton is that we will be able to turn that beekeeping into a small business and get the license to be able to actually sell that honey and distribute it," Stenger said.

The Fulton course would be offered each year from spring to fall so participants can get experience managing bees at the busiest time of the year, when they are preparing for the winter.

The class would also emphasize the role that honeybees play in food production, threats to the species, and how urban beekeepers can help protect and strengthen their population.

The course could potentially be open to the public as well, assuming community members are interested in taking it, according to Stenger.

The Osborne Association will have help financing its programming at Fulton thanks to The New York Community Trust, which recently approved a $75,000 grant to help the group's efforts at transforming the old prison, which would also include offering supportive and transitional housing.

"We're trying to help the thousands of young ex-offenders who return to The Bronx from jail and prison each year," Roderick Jenkins, a program officer at NYCT, said in a statement. "With a boost getting their lives back on track with housing, education, and job training, they have far better chances of staying out of jail."

Fulton had been a minimum security prison from 1975 until it closed in 2011. Osborne received the facility from the state in 2013, and the group has spent about three years working to turn it into a reentry center and economic hub for the formerly incarcerated.

The estimated opening date for Fulton is the end of 2016, and a meeting about redeveloping the building will take place on Tuesday, Oct. 7 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in the Hostos Community College Savoy Multipurpose Room at 120 E. 149th St.

Stenger acknowledged that most people Osborne works with do not have much experience with beekeeping.

"A lot of these guys, if they ever had any interaction with bees, it wasn’t positive," he said. "This is well outside of their comfort zone, and I think that’s actually pretty good."