Honey and hope: Project aims to yield both for veterans in Tuscola County
first beehive that is part of Thera-Bees, a project aimed to help
homeless veterans learn a marketable skill — beekeeping. (Photo by
John Cook)
A box patriotically adorned in red, white, and blue rests in knee deep snowdrifts at the edge of an Akron Township field – a beehive containing 40,000 bees, making honey for a future harvest, already providing a lot more.
The beehive represents hope, a future, a reason, and distraction along with the calming, soothing effect of the buzzing bees.
It’s Thera-Bees – a project designed to help homeless veterans learn a trade with hopes of one day earning a living as a beekeeper.
The soon-to-be nonprofit organization has been a project in the works for about a year at the Anka Akron Veterans Program – an Akron-based transitional program for veterans who are homeless and have co-occurring mental health and/or substance abuse disorders.
“It’s something outside, which I like, something local we can do, and it’s something that can help earn some money. So that’s three things on my checklist,” said Allen Carlock, who has been a resident at Anka Akron for less than a month. Carlock is among the inaugural participants in the program. (Read more)
(This story originally appeared in the Dec. 24, 2016 print edition of The Tuscola County Advertiser and can be read in its entirety here.)