Witte, Cantigny Golf shine at Bayer bee event

Scott Witte, CGCS

When a golfer runs into the pro shop complaining about a swarm of bees on the golf course, most in the golf industry see a crisis. Scott Witte, CGCS, sees an opportunity.

An opportunity to educate, to inform and to further spread the gospel of the important role golf courses can play in the growth of habitat for pollinators. It's a passion that has driven Witte's personal and professional development for more than two decades, and one that is obviously front and center at the facility he manages, the 27-hole Cantigny Golf in Wheaton, Ill., about an hour west of downtown Chicago.

"There is this strange power and allure that bees have that hooks people once they learn about them. They definitely hooked me," says Witte (@SCOTTAWITTE on Twitter), a 30-year GCSAA member who has been at Cantigny for nearly 22 years. "And working with them the way we have definitely shows that golf is part of the solution, not the problem. It proves golf can coexist with bees."

On Tuesday, Witte had another opportunity to share that passion and educate a whole new group of visitors when he and Cantigny hosted an event, organized by Bayer and it's bee care division, dubbed the "Feed a Bee Experience," which highlighted Witte's efforts as well as the importance of healthy pollinator habitat to the world's overall food supply.

Accomplishing two such varied goals — highlighting golf's work with pollinators and emphasizing how crucial bees are to the food we eat — took more than just the 27 holes of golf at Cantigny, although a full tour of the operation and Witte's extensive work in developing habitat for pollinators was front and center during the day. But the event also expanded to include the entirety of Cantigny Park — an area that was once home to Robert R. McCormick, the longtime editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune — and its well-regarded culinary team.

In a menu filled with items that featured honey, much of which had been harvested from Witte's hives, attendees tasted lamb chops, beets and a banana mousse that all had been prepared by Cantigny executive chef Frank Bellino.

For Witte, the opportunity to bring yet another group to Cantigny to witness all he and his team have achieved harkened back to a time when he opened the eyes of a regular group of golfers to how the game and bees interact, an experience he calls his "a-ha moment" when it came to the power and potential of what he was doing.

"There was a little team-building event for some of our regular golfers who play in the CanHead Cup, which pits them against some regular golfers at Arrowhead Golf Club (also in Wheaton)," Witte says. "We were all sitting around when one of them asked about the bees. I knew I kind of had their attention, so I asked if they wanted to see inside a hive.

"They couldn't believe it. And they were so enthralled by it, that right then I realized, 'wow, people really think this is cool.' This was a regular group of guys who now got what we did, why we did it and were totally supportive of what we were doing. It just added another dimension to their golfing experience, which I think is great."