A person appears standing before a honey extractor and honey bottles and giving an interview. Text behind the honey extractor reads T's Bees. Text on the bottom left reads, "Tristan Ellerbruch. Food products and processing SAE. Stockbridge Valley FFA, Munnsville, NY."
I am Tristan Ellerbruch, and I go to Stockbridge Valley Central School in Munnsville, New York.
Tristan wears a protective garments from head to toe and tries to open a beehive. Later, an open beehive appears. Honey bottles are placed near the beehive. Bees come out from the bottom of the beehive. Tristan pulls back the grasses around the beehive. Later, a wooden frame with honeycomb appears.
My SAE is an Entrepreneurship SAE where I focus on the raising and maintaining of hives with my beehives. And then I bottle and sell the products—the honey--and in the future, I would like to try and produce some wax products like candles. Bees make honey because that is their food source. That’s how they make their food. They take the nectar from flowers; they bring it back to their hive. And they will essentially dehydrate it, and they make it into the gummy honey that’s very high in sugar, very high in nutrients. That’s what keeps them going mostly through the winter.
Pictures of Tristan placing a wooden frame inside a beehive and Tristan holding a wooden frame with bees on the honeycomb appears. Text above these pictures on the top left reads, "1,000-dollar project grant helps Stockbridge Valley, NY, FFA member see sweet success." Later, a box with wooden frames with honeycombs appears. One frame is placed on the top of the box. Tristan opens the honey extractor, closes it, and operates it to extract honey. Later, Tristan standing and giving an interview reappears.
A big turning point in my SAE was when I applied for a $1,000 SAE grant through the state FFA. I was one of, like, 36 recipients of it, and that allowed me to purchase a bunch of materials, a bunch of boxes, things I needed to really jumpstart it, and once I had that and was able to fully devote my SAE to this, I was like yes, this is what I want to do. This is fun. I love this.
Bees coming out from the bottom of the beehive reappears. Later, Tristan pushes the bees inside a small honey extractor and closes it. Then, two female lab technicians work in the lab followed by a woman leading a cow using a rope. An open honey extractor shows honey extraction. Later, it is closed.
All SAEs are very, very different. I have an entrepreneurship SAE. So essentially, I have my own business with this. You can have a laboratory-based SAE where you’re studying, you know, science in a lab; you can have a placement SAE, where you’re going, and you work on a farm. No two people’s experiences are going to be the exact same.
Tristan standing and giving an interview reappears.
I want to go into electrical engineering, like electrical mechanical engineering kind of Robotics Engineering. That stuff is really cool to me.
Tristan removes the grasses around the beehive placed in the farm. Later, he removes all the plants around the beehive, holding a small honey extractor in his hand.
Oh, I am absolutely going to keep this as a hobby. I love doing this. It may not be the main focus of my life, but I wouldn’t give this up. I love it.
A small cluster of bees appears outside the beehive. Later, Tristan removing the grasses around the beehive reappears. Followed by which, Tristan takes a wooden frame with honeycomb and puts it inside the honey extractor. Tristan standing and giving an interview reappears.
I think the most important thing I’ve learned from my SAE is it’s all about the work you put in. And what you put in is what you will get out. It’s fun and rewarding and advice I would give is don’t stop. Give it your all because if you, if you, give it your all, it’ll give back to you. It is rewarding. I love it. As much as you put into it, it’ll give back to you tenfold because it’s the experiences and the opportunities that it’ll give you are so much more than what you would put into it in the first place.