On April 23, a swarm of students and beekeepers gathered outside the South Loading Zone of the EMU to move three new colonies of bees from their crates into the three hives on the building’s roof.
David Flock, a maintenance worker at the EMU, said EMU director Laurie Woodward approached him to ask about starting a hive on the EMU several years ago. Flock had been beekeeping for a decade and provided bees from local hives.
Woodward approached Flock for help with setting up bee hives with educational purposes from the sustainability center, as well as the Bee Friendly Committee, a club. Students wanted to learn more about bees in a hands-on way, and Flock has the connections in the bee community as well as the experience. From the hives set up on the EMU roof as well as another hive set up at the Grove, students can learn more about beekeeping, honey production and bees in general.
Flock, who is full of information about bees and natural honey production, explained that maintaining the stability of a hive is a tricky matter, and it comes down to factors that sometimes people cannot control: anything from a wasp attack to a hive swarming and moving away or a cold front can take out a hive.
Flock and the Bee Friendly Committee do what they can to adapt and learn about bee placement but usually replace the hives every year, which is a normal process in the beekeeping community.
Flock is not sure what took out the last flock but suspects that it was the cold winter in 2019. Because the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Flock and the Bee Friendly Group have not been able to move new colonies into the hive until now.
Honey production is also unpredictable with bees. In years past, Flock has gathered up to 15 pounds of natural honey from a hive. But in 2019, Flock gathered only a pint from the EMU hives.
Flock usually jars up the natural honey and sells it, using that money to buy more hives for the EMU roof.
Flock and Chad Wells, the EMU building superintendent, could not endorse buying natural honey enough. Flock had a distaste for honey until they tried it natural, straight from the hive. Natural honey is incredibly different from most store-bought honey, as store-bought honey is ultra-refined and warmed up. When honey is warmed up, it’s stripped of all of the nutrients that add to the health benefits of honey.
Wells said that these benefits include alleviating allergy symptoms. After receiving a jar of natural honey from Flock, Wells noticed a difference in his allergies.
Wearing beekeeping hoods and suits, the students move through the maintenance offices of the EMU and onto the roof. There, Flock pulls out the slats of the hive to remove bees that clumped together during the winter. Two volunteers carry three crates of bees and set them on top of the bee hives.
Flock then begins moving the bees from the crates to their new hives, a delicate process that depends on the queen bee adapting to the new hive, and the new hive adapting to her. If the queen bee does not adapt, then Flock can simply order a new queen bee and get it to the hive quickly via overnight shipping.
When asked if there is an entire industry behind breeding queen bees, Flock simply said, “Oh, yeah!”
The first step of moving the bees over to their new hive is taking out their food source, which is a can full of sugar-water. Then, in a process that allows for the hive to adapt to the pheromones of its new queen, Flock shoves a gummy bear into the opening of the queen’s private, tiny box. This allows her to eat her way out of the box, and into her new hive, while the rest of the bees adapt to her pheromones.
“Hives take the personality of their queen,” Flock said.
Then, students get to move the general bee population into the new hives by forcing the bees out of the boxes and into the new hives. The bees begin to fly around, yet Flock reminds the rest of the group that this breed of bees — Apis mellifera ligustica — are chosen for their docility and nonaggressive nature.
While the bee boxes on top of the EMU roof allow for students to get hands-on experience with beekeeping, most of the caretaking is left to the hive.
In hives, each bee has a role and contributes to the maintenance of the group. According to Wells and Flock, there are a single queen bee, worker bees, undertaker bees and security bees.
Flock talked about how guard bees are particularly interesting, because they can remember the scent of a threat. While working on hives in his garden, Flock was followed by a security bee until it inevitably stung Flock.
Anna Brown, the pollinator outreach chair for the Bee Friendly Committee, finally got to see the bees firsthand when the hives were installed on the roof on April 23, but has been active with the community since 2020.
Brown and Flock are both adamant that the EMU bees are for educational purposes and are not part of the “Save the Bee” movement, citing that while there are threats to honeybee health right now, honeybees are not endangered.
“Doing these hives on the roof is a really enriching experience,” Brown said. ”People can look at and handle bees and realize that they don’t have to be afraid when they see a bee.”
Brown and Flock also insist that there are simple things that people can choose to do to help bee populations.
Flock said to use natural pesticides like clove oil and cinnamon, as opposed to pesticides like neonicotinoids.
To help bee populations, Brown said, plant a lot of flowers and make bee baths available.
