Bees To Make Touchdown on Campus Under Cloak of Darkness, Cooler Temps

Keep an eye out or perhaps listen closely for bees will be here sooner than anybody expects. The bees are finally due to arrive on Penn State Greater Allegheny (PSUGA) campus within the next week or two after a long three years of waiting!

Associate Professor of Information Sciences and Technology, Galen Grimes, is eagerly awaiting the final preparations that need to be done in order to bring his bees that he has been taking care of at his home for the last three years to campus.

“I was hoping they would have been here by now. We’re still waiting for maintenance to finish setting up the fence,” Grimes said. The fence that is being set up right above the yellow lot is intended to keep “curiosity seekers” away as well as keep potential predators like bears from destroying the hives and killing the bees, Grimes added.

It is Grimes’ hope that the once the fence is fully completed, the bees will be able to be transported from Grimes’ home to the PSUGA campus at night time when the bees are less active and situated properly within their beehives.

A potential problem with moving the bees is the fall nectar flow, a time where bees are more active and protective in order to store as much honey in their hives to survive throughout the winter. Grimes, however, is not too worried about this as he says the bees have already stored a lot of honey in their hives.  The temperature also needs to be a bit cooler, Grimes said, so that should happen this month.

Grimes is also excited about the “abundance of Japanese knotweed” that surrounds campus. This plant, although invasive, is considered one of the best by beekeepers as it provides a lot of food for bees during the autumn season, Grimes explained.

Not only will the bees be a unique sight on the PSUGA campus, but they will also help with the environment and with conservation efforts. “Bees pollinate so much of the crops that we eat,” Grimes said. Bees are a lot more important to society than many people realize, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, so their introduction to campus will be great for everybody.

The idea for having bees on campus came about when Professor Grimes approached PSUGA’s previous chancellor, Dr. Jacqueline Edmundson, about allocating funds to bring two beehives to campus as part of the campus’ sustainability program back in 2020 before the pandemic happened.

Along with the bees coming to campus, their arrival will also kick off the brand new apiary club. Grimes hopes to have an “extraction party” of the bee’s honey sometime this spring.  He plans to teach the students in the club how to properly extract the honey from the hives in a safe manner to protect not just people, but the bees, as well.

 

Story by:  Brandon Schuetz, (bms6925@psu.edu)