Gethsemane Open House
Thursday, June 22nd from 10:00am – 2:00pm
Gethsemane Cemetery – Chapel Mausoleum
Join us on Thursday, June 22 for our Open House at the Chapel Mausoleum at Gethsemane Cemetery.
Learn about the various burial options Gethsemane Cemetery has to offer, our future developments, and new statuary and benches.
Refreshments, Prizes, and Special Discounts available!
Registration is NOT required. We look forward to seeing you there!
We Love our Pollinators!
The Catholic Cemeteres are proud to host bee hives at our cemeteries. Last year we were introduced to Alveole, a social enterprise originating in Montreal, which offers a service of installation and maintenance of bee colonies in urban and suburban areas across Canada and the United Staes.
Learn About Our Bees!
Our Executive Director, Joan Gecik, wrote on our new addition to our cemeteries…
By teaming with Alveole, we would become a host site for hives that would eventually be installed with businesses in the Twin Cities areas. We would have a few hives of our own for pollination and honey. Best part? A beekeeper would be assigned to us. Yes, it meant that we would not be responsible for taking care of the hives, but would benefit from having them. Each hive has 10 frames that go into each super, or box, that makes up the hive. Bees can fly up to 10 miles from the hive, usually staying within 2 miles, and since they were ensconced in a prairie, they wouldn’t need to range very far for food. We found a section of the cemetery where the hives would not be visible from the street, roadways, or areas where people visit. The hives were delivered near the end of May (2022) with a little help from my field manager, and we have not even noticed our new neighbors.
Our cemeteries are invested in their protection to ensure a commitment to all living beings. Honey bees have become the unlikely ambassadors of something incredibly important and much larger than themselves: the rapid changes we must invoke to ensure our food systems remain sustainable. This is why we’re shedding light on honey bees, so that citizens grow attached to them and that we may ultimately harness that attachment to ensure a commitment to all living beings as well as a transformed view of the environment. Once a person begins to take an interest in the world of bees, environmental challenges that were once distant and abstract suddenly appear much more urgent and important. Bees allow for all of those who pay attention to the world around them to better understand the importance of pollinators for the health of our ecosystems and biodiversity as a whole.
It is good to know that our cemeteries can be places to help sustain the environment even as we care for grieving families. For more information visit www.alveole.buzz or info@alveole.buzz or click on the button below to follow our bees on Alveole’s website.