Burt's Bees Ain't Got Nothin' on This Operation

By Jocelyn Geboy in Miscellaneous on Sep 26, 2006 10:06PM

We have never made it a secret that we like bees* and the good work they do. However, we know that people tend to be wary of bees. And ex-convicts. The public at large tends to get anxious at the sight of, starts backing away from, and doesn't have a really friendly relationship with bees or ex-cons. But in the neighborhood of North Lawndale, there are people working hard to make a difference in the lives of people who have served time and have criminal records or other barriers to employment. The North Lawndale Employment Network, created in 1997, has implemented their Sweet Beginnings program.

It's a program designed to give people who struggle finding jobs and are caught in the cycle of poverty, crime, drugs, and incarceration, in part due to the fact that once they come out of institutions, they have a hard time finding jobs in the mainstream labor market due to their criminal records. And so it goes. Their new trade? Beekeeping.* Rock on.

The executive director of The North Lawndale Employment Network, Brenda Palms Barber, felt that something had to and could be done. Sweet Beginnings was created along with the product line Beeline. The jobs in the program range from tending the hives and landscaping, to selling the honey and related products at farmer's markets around the city (see below for times and locations).

The program is inexpensive and offers skills that can be transitioned to a mainstream job market. It gives people with a rough background a head start (the participants get paid between $7 and $9 an hour). Seventeen have completed the program since 2004, and none have returned to prison.

And for the Whole Foods lover in all of us: the honey is natural and chemical-free. Not to mention the urban bees have an advantage over their more countrified cousins: "Honey produced in urban areas is of higher quality and has a better taste than rural farmed honey, because urban bees can easily travel to a high density of well-maintained parks, gardens, and flower beds. Public and private gardens within the city boast a great variety of flower species, which lend varied flavors to the honey produced with the different nectars.... Sweet Beginnings beehives are located near Garfield and Douglass Parks and countless residential gardens." Take that, rural bees!

*In a follow-up to our earlier story on Gabriel Jacobs, we searched around the web to find a denouement to the story, finally landing on this Tribune story of last week which tells us that the Evanston city council will vote on October 9 on a beekeeping ordinance that would not ban beekeeping outright in Evanston, but whose restrictions would prohibit Jacobs from having his backyard hive. Stay tuned.

Find out where you can buy Beeline after the jump!

Here's where you can find Beeline:

Green City Farmer’s Market through October on Wednesdays from 7:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in Lincoln Park, just north of North Avenue between Clark Street and Stockton Avenue.

In November and December, the market moves to Saturdays indoors at the Lincoln Park Zoo lion house.

Beeline is also at the Oak Park Farmer’s Market on Saturdays from 7:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at 460 Lake St. in Oak Park, Illinois, May through October.

Image via acampm1