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Despite numerous setbacks after the launch of Bee Orange at Syracuse University in 2019, the project’s leaders managed to continue their community connection and sustainability efforts to sell their honey across campus.

The project, inspired by Bee Campus USA, established six honey beehives on South Campus in the spring of 2020. The project aims to protect pollinator habitats, increase environmental awareness and encourage appreciation of nature, said Meg Lowe, sustainability coordinator and SU Bee Campus USA committee chair.

“To bring the SU community outside and get them a little bit out of their comfort zone and then have that accessible visual element opens up the conversation about why it’s important to have the honey bees on campus,” she said.

The beehive program was initiated by SU’s Sustainability and Management department, with the goal of promoting sustainability and benefiting native pollinators.

Lisa Olson-Gugerty, an associate teaching professor in Falk College, has become the primary manager of the hives. She said her team’s hard work, effort and money put into the project have been worth their time and has helped them achieve their community-driven mission.

“Bringing people into understanding public health doesn’t have to be complicated,” she said. “People see this as positive action by the university to contribute to the community as an act of good nature — literally and figuratively.”

The project established six honey beehives on South Campus. Lilli Iannella | Assistant News Editor

With the onset of COVID-19, the team’s plans for spring 2020 were diverted, and the campus hives faced a colony collapse over this past winter, resulting in the loss of all the bees. The Bee Orange team installed six new nukes — or sets of bees — in May.

Two months later, a car drove into the enclosure and knocked over two hives which cost over $4,000 to rebuild, Olson-Gugerty said. 

“Luckily, the way we have to look at it is that our bees are okay and still producing honey,” Lowe said. “It was a cost to us and our program, but our bees are letting us know that they’re still okay.”

To recover from these costly obstacles and earn proceeds, the Bee Orange team sold honey that the campus bees produced in campus convenience stores and the Schine Student Center beginning on Feb. 8. 

The one-pound jars of honey were sold for $12, and the 144 jars that were available on campus sold out by early to mid March, Lowe said. 

“(Our plans) kind of got put on the back burner,” she said. “It didn’t have the big rollout like we wanted it to, but this past year, especially this past spring, I think it was pretty successful.”

The team plans to start selling more of the honey starting between the end of September and beginning of October, depending on impending harvesting conditions. Lowe expects to harvest more than the 144 pounds of honey extracted last year, and the selling locations will remain unchanged. 

In the spring, the honey was pale yellow with a green hue and had a menthol-like flavor, as the linden and basswood trees surrounding the hives give it a distinctly unique and minty flavor, Olson-Gugerty said. In the fall, the honey will be darker and consists of a stronger flavor due to the golden rod trees in the area. 

Lowe said she hopes to eventually install more hives across campus, but she plans to wait a year or two to allow for sustainability and comparative studies. For now, the team plans to create a bee boutique — a house for burrowing bees.

“We want to make sure that we’re producing what it is that we need and leaving enough behind for the other pollinators as well,” Lowe said.

Bee Orange has been involved with nutrition education, service learning and public health courses at SU. The program hopes to expand their connection with the campus community to inspire active participation.

“Honey bees are a keystone species in our ecosystem,” Lowe said. “Without them we wouldn’t have one-third of our food.”

Published on August 29, 2021 at 10:04 pm

Contact Lilli: laiannel@syr.edu | @LilliIannella