“The Honeybee Festival”
With the fun of the Fourth of July Parade, concert and fireworks last week now as memories, this is a good time to mark your calendar and make plans to attend the Honeybee Festival. One of the favorite community festivals, and a long-standing Kernersville tradition, the Honeybee Festival will be held on Saturday, August 19th at Kernersville’s Fourth of July Park. The park will be “buzzing” with activity from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with live music, free admission, and free parking at Kernersville Elementary School.
The Honeybee Festival is a great opportunity to enjoy summer fun with family and friends, and is a family-friendly event. Featuring live music, craft vendors, and children’s activities, there is something for everyone at the Honeybee Festival. With educational displays by the police department, fire department, and parks & recreation department, it is a chance to learn more about our community and have a great time. There are lots of fun activities for children, including games, pony rides, face painting, inflatables and a petting zoo. Food vendors and food trucks will be available on-site.
There is also an opportunity to tour the historic one-room schoolhouse, and learn about local history. Thanks to volunteers with the Kernersville Historic Preservation Society, history comes alive. Write on a slate board, sit at a wooden desk, and learn about the education you could have had in Kernersville in the early days. Just behave or you may be called out to wear the dunce hat!
While touring the one-room schoolhouse, be sure to visit the building directly behind the schoolhouse. Constructed with materials salvaged from an old barn, a structure like this reminds us that back in the day, a school needed other buildings near it, as a place to store wood, or as a cover for the well or spring where children could draw water needed during the school day. Just imagine your teacher sending you out on a winter day to get wood for the school stove!
And, of course, the Honeybee Festival is a great place to find honey! Beekeepers will be there, and products made from honey will be available. You can “bee” sure to find crafts and a variety of local honey for sale at the Honeybee Festival.
The honeybee is the state insect of North Carolina, having been officially recognized on March 5, 1973, largely as a result of the successful efforts of local resident and WWII veteran Brady Mullinax and the North Carolina Beekeeper’s Association. The first Honeybee Festival was organized in 1975 by Lucy Lewis, Rev. Jim Carriker, and Beverly Everette in recognition and commemoration of Mullinax’s efforts and like many good ideas, has become a Kernersville tradition.
So mark your calendar to come out to Fourth of July Park on Saturday, August 19th and enjoy music and fun at the Honeybee Festival, a family-friendly Kernersville tradition. See you there!
Dawn Morgan is the Mayor of Kernersville and writes a weekly column for the News.
