The warm rays of light that touch the early morning dew signals the coming of spring. Daffodils and tulips begin flowering as some of the first blooms, but they wouldn’t exist without the work from one small, but amazing creature. With each morning beginning a little earlier and the days staying light longer, the buzz of life on campus that died down now starts to flourish.
What may be unknown to many, is the existence of beehives on top of the Erb Memorial Union and other locations around campus. Beehives are not uncommon for UO, as bees are also one of the top pollinators in Oregon.
“For years and years the Urban Farm had honey bees, ” Harper Keller said, adding that an OSU bee scientist had previously worked on the farm. “But when she retired, I decided I could just figure it out.”
Keeler is a senior instructor and the director of the Urban Farm Program, which has taken place at the Urban Farm for over 40 years and was one of the first areas on campus to have bees.
The Urban Farm at UO has managed bees for over 20 years along with the first indoor observation hive at Huestis Hall in 1997. With spring, an increase of activity is normally seen in the bees as the weather turns warmer and they begin to leave their winter clusters in search of food.
The move to remote online classes last spring was not the only repercussion of the pandemic. The University of Oregon campus had evidence of the pandemic affecting life, with its lack of students, as they went home and buildings became restricted-access only. While the campus was desolate, the inactive honeycomb hives also laid empty and unkept.
The beehives that suffered losses can be attributed to a mix of factors, whether it be from mites, lack of habitat, the use of certain pesticides or general colony collapse. A single worker honeybee typically has a lifespan of only a couple weeks, but during the winter they are less active and can live much longer.
The general campus restrictions and regulations that were in place also prevented students from checking on the EMU beehives, which led to the hives staying empty for over a year.
Anna Brown, the outreach chair of the UO Bee Friendly Committee, stated that the bee colonies on the EMU roof most likely collapsed in the fall 2019.
“Last spring, we did not get to look at the hives on the EMU roof,” Brown said. “Even though last fall, we knew that those had also collapsed. You don’t want to repopulate it during the winter, so ideally, last spring would have been when we would have gone up to the roof and checked those out and potentially repopulated them, but that did not happen.”
Student Sustainability Center director Taylor McHolm said that they plan to repopulate the beehives on the EMU roof in April 2021, as they were not able to last year due to the pandemic.
Along with the refilling of the EMU bee boxes, an observation hive in Huestis Hall will be prepared for this spring term. Assistant Professor of Biology Peter Wetherwax, originally set up the bee boxes and used them to teach his biology class on bees and pollination. Last year, the biology department had to adapt to the pandemic and created a live-stream bee cam, which they plan to integrate again this year.
“The original plan was to use it in our upper division Pollination Biology class, teach the pollination students about bees and then have them teach the lower division BI 213 students.” Wetherwax said. “We thought having the hive, in a lab in Huestis that most of them know, would help them to remain connected to UO and to the biology department in particular.”
In 2018, the campus became officially recognized as a Bee-Friendly Campus. Part of the Bee USA certification includes taking other steps that will benefit the health and survival of bees and pollinators on campus.
One group that works to achieve this is the UO Bee Friendly Committee, a student-led organization through the Student Sustainability Center. They have taken steps to create a supportive habitat for all pollinators, but focus on honeybees and native bee species. The Bee Committee has also managed the EMU beehives with some help from the building’s administration.
In order to make landscaped areas, both on and off campus, the committee has worked to plant patches of native plants and flowers. They have to also be careful to not use certain pesticides, as they can be harmful to pollinators.
UO Landscape Designer Jane Brubaker has helped create a map of the existing natural areas on campus, and in efforts to expand the existing spaces, has worked with the UO Bee Friendly Committee to plan different events.
“It’s been a really fun kind of challenge this past year with COVID. We’ve had very small groups but people really enjoy getting out and participating in the planting, so we’re trying to keep doing that,” Brubaker said.
To find the location of these spaces on campus, students can go to the bee layer of UO’s interactive maps.
In addition to the EMU and Huestis Hall hives, the other locations include the Urban Farm, the student-run Grove Garden and the Columbia Annex. The beehives on the EMU roof were the most recently installed, but due to not being the most accessible, they have been thought of as a bit of a hidden gem.
This year, all five bee boxes at the Urban Farm are empty, but Keeler has plans to clean and prep the boxes so that either wild bee swarms can settle into them or for when he repopulates them with new colonies. Keeler said that there are multiple hives at each location, but he is currently only aware of one active bee colony, which is at the Columbia Annex.
Along with the inactive beehives, the Urban Farm also has small mason bee hotels. The bee hotels are small boxes filled with hollow tubes and in the spring, mason bees can be seen hatching and flying between the little tubes.
“The good thing about mason bees is they pollinate remarkably well because they’re really messy. Pollination is a bee going from flower to flower, and they get it on them. Honeybees are really pristine and neat,” Keeler said.
Students can take additional steps to help save the bees and native pollinators by planting more habitat in their homes or gardens for the early pollinators.
“Pollinator pocket gardens provide a little bit more habitat and actually quite a bit can be done in urban landscapes. We think these are only out in the wild nature, but they actually are within our more formalized home gardens too and I think that’s the idea of pocket plantings; if you only have a small space, you can do quite a bit,” Brubaker said.
Students who want to get involved or learn more can reach out to the UO Bee Friendly Committee.
Anna Sundholm is a senior studying journalism at UO and a freelancer for the Emerald. She previously wrote for Lane Community College’s student newspaper, The Torch.