Thanks to a generous grant, Wareham Middle School will add two bee hives to its collection of cranberry bogs, chickens and oysters.

On Monday night, representatives from A.D. Makepeace awarded $151,000 in grants to 29 organizations from the Neighborhood Fund.

The Wareham High School Project Bee, led by teachers Bonnie LaSoursa and Sean Brown, received a grant of $3,277.  When Brown heard about a bee class offered by an art teacher, and about students in an English class who were reading "The Secret Life of Bees," he put the pieces together.

"I said, 'Oh, this would be a great chance to kind of connect a couple areas," he said. "The hope is that with Makepeace money, we'll have two bee hives and it'll connect, not only English and art, but math, our culinary program that's new... and to the cranberry bogs."

Located behind the Wareham Middle School are two cranberry bogs built by STEAM academy and Makepeace employees. It was funded by a Makepeace grant and serve as outside classrooms for students.

The seventh graders take care of the bog while the eighth graders create computer programs and applications that help with cranberry production.

LaSoursa, a middle school teacher, explained that the bees are necessary to pollinate and help the bog grow.

"Hopefully we will harvest next year. Now we have honey and we have bees, and we have bees at school, and we're farming oysters," she said. "We're hoping to tie all of that together and all the different pieces and go into what it means to run a business like that."

The grant awarded to Wareham High School Project Bee is just the tip of the iceberg.

With almost $1.8 million dollars invested into more than 200 organizations over the past 12 years, the Neighborhood Fund has focused on areas including community services, historic preservation, agriculture, affordable housing and healthcare. Education is the biggest group, and Wareham has received most of those grants.

"There's a reason why," said Chair Christopher Makepeace. He wrote down a list of percentages to share with the audience.

According to Makepeace, 47 percent of Wareham students are economically disadvantaged; Wareham has more students with disabilities than the state average (23 percent compared 17 percent), and fewer graduates go onto higher education in Wareham compared to the state (54 percent compared to 76 percent).

Four other programs that directly benefit Wareham students received grants, including the Bridgewater State University Foundation's Fast Track to College, a dual enrollment program for high school seniors, which received $5,000. The Wareham Library Foundation's Summer Reading Program was awarded $3,000; the Gleason Family YMCA's Special Needs Autism Aquatics Program received $5,000; and the Junior Achievement of Southern Massachusetts received $3,000.

In the healthcare department, Tobey Hospital ($10,000), Turning Point ($5,000), and Wareham Middle School CARE Builders Club ($3,500) received grants.

The Mass Audubon Discovery Days Summer Youth Programming, hosted mostly in Lyman Reserve and Great Neck Wildlife Sanctuary, introduced themselves before the environmental grants were awarded. Representatives Mary Griffin and Jennifer Costa accepted $5,000 from Makepeace.

Among the recipients were Upper Cape Cod Regional Technical School's Black Soldier Fly Organic Waste Composting Pilot, which was awarded $9,981.

"In a time where the 24-hour news cycle over and over again exposes us to the dark side of humanity...there are lots of people working very hard every day doing really important, good things," said A.D. Makepeace Company President and CEO Michael Hogan. "We like to be able to shine a little bit of a spotlight on the work that all of you do."