On January 20, 2005, the Busy Bee Band was featured in the Sunkist Grower's Network NewsLINK.  The following article appeared:

​

Busy Bee Band sells Sunkist

​

The Busy Bee Band & Honeybees at East Fairmont High School in Fairmont, West Virginia marked its 20th year of partnering with Sunkist to sell oranges and grapefruit for its annual fundraiser. Band Director Earl McConnell was eloquent in his praise of the fruit quality and excellent cooperation he gets each year from Sunkist's Pittsburgh sales office, noting the students sold 87,000 pounds of fruit and realized a $22,000 profit this year. He enclosed copies of an ad used in the local paper that generated sales of 1,500 pounds in phone orders from areas outside the reach of their door-to-door sales efforts. All together, the band has sold 2,485,530 pounds of Sunkist citrus over the years. "Not bad for a high school group in the hills of West Virginia," writes the proud director.

​

"This has been a positive relationship for Sunkist, as well," said Domestic Sales VP John McGuigan, who recalls helping the band make its deals when he was in the Pittsburgh office. "The goodwill and positive publicity generated by the fundraiser far outweigh our profits from fruit sales," he said. "We're proud to have helped the students raise over $350,000 in the last decade alone."