{"id":34645,"date":"2024-11-04T10:26:47","date_gmt":"2024-11-04T15:26:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=34645"},"modified":"2024-11-14T10:30:47","modified_gmt":"2024-11-14T15:30:47","slug":"brief-bee-club-cultivates-a-growing-buzz-on-campus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/brief-bee-club-cultivates-a-growing-buzz-on-campus\/","title":{"rendered":"Brief: Bee Club Cultivates a Growing Buzz on Campus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Something sweet is happening at the Furman solar farm.<\/strong> Members of Furman\u2019s Bee Club visit about once a week to tend hives of honey makers buzzing around the fields, forests and flower beds of campus and surrounding environs.<\/p>\n

Furman\u2019s history of beekeeping has waxed and waned, says Laura Bain, the university\u2019s associate director of sustainability assessment. After several hives placed at the Furman Farm failed in 2019 and the pandemic forced students off campus in 2020, the hives on the solar farm took shape in 2021 when Furman\u2019s grounds superintendent, David Manning, a beekeeper himself, donated a hive.<\/p>\n

Jackson Lehmann \u201925, a Bell Tower Scholar from Atlanta, started raising bees in high school in his backyard. He connected with Manning and added two hives of his own, and the Furman apiary was off and buzzing. There have been as many as 15 hives, but the cold of winter invariably kills off several a year. Funds from the Student Government Association allow the Bee Club to replace them and at the beginning of summer, there were nine hives, going strong.<\/p>\n

The Bee Club, with around 60 members, was approved earlier this year by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to sell honey, with hopes of making it available in the Dining Hall and in the Bell Tower Bookstore and Bistro.<\/p>\n

Maggie Kelleher \u201926 was drawn to bees because, well, they\u2019re super cute. They\u2019re also vitally important, says the Bee Club president, and helping raise bees makes her feel like she\u2019s contributing something good to the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey pollinate widely to help with food production. They promote vegetation growth, which helps with CO2. Their goal isn\u2019t necessarily to protect the environment, but it happens,\u201d says Kelleher, a Townes Scholar double majoring in sustainability science and philosophy.<\/p>\n

But bees receive little grace. \u201cThey\u2019re always having to work and overcome something throughout the year,\u201d Lehmann says.<\/p>\n

Reason to relax<\/strong><\/p>\n

The sensory-rich experience of beekeeping, Lehmann, Kelleher and Manning say, is relaxing: gently lifting the lid of a hive to see thousands of busy bees moving about with purpose, squeezing a few clouds of smoke over the bees to calm them, hearing the gentle hum of their wings.<\/p>\n

Kelleher, Lehmann, the Bee Club treasurer, and the other officers hold informational meetings to prepare the club members for the hive inspections they will begin in the early spring, making sure they know the difference between a drone and a worker and how to spot the queen.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat time of year generally involves weekly hive checks to make sure the queen hasn\u2019t left,\u201d says Lehmann. \u201cWe want to be adding extra storage to their hive, whether that\u2019s in the form of frames that are designed for babies or adding honey boxes to store surplus nectar.\u201d<\/p>\n

To bee or not to bee<\/strong><\/p>\n

Honeybees were in decline across the country, but a recent U.S. Department of Agriculture survey showed that since 2007 the number of hives has risen 31% to more than 3.8 million.<\/p>\n

But domestic honeybees are still dying due to colony collapse, and a different government survey, the annual honey report, shows colonies declining. Factor in wild pollinators that suffer when domestic bees thrive \u2013 butterflies, beetles and wild bees \u2013 and the honeybee story is complicated.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s uncomplicated are the lessons students learn that transcend working with bees. They go from timid or even scared of being stung, to calm and relaxed. \u201cThey put their hands right into the hive and focus on the bees,\u201d Manning says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The club is growing and has plans to market Furman honey around campus and the community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":389,"featured_media":34982,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3057,3055,1963],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-around-the-lake-fall-2024","category-fall-2024","category-furman-magazine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/389"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34645"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35228,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34645\/revisions\/35228"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}