Brief: Bee Club Cultivates a Growing Buzz on Campus
Something sweet is happening at the Furman solar farm. Members of Furman’s 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.
Furman’s history of beekeeping has waxed and waned, says Laura Bain, the university’s 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’s grounds superintendent, David Manning, a beekeeper himself, donated a hive.
Jackson Lehmann ’25, 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.
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.
Maggie Kelleher ’26 was drawn to bees because, well, they’re super cute. They’re also vitally important, says the Bee Club president, and helping raise bees makes her feel like she’s contributing something good to the world.
“They pollinate widely to help with food production. They promote vegetation growth, which helps with CO2. Their goal isn’t necessarily to protect the environment, but it happens,” says Kelleher, a Townes Scholar double majoring in sustainability science and philosophy.
But bees receive little grace. “They’re always having to work and overcome something throughout the year,” Lehmann says.
Reason to relax
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.
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.
“That time of year generally involves weekly hive checks to make sure the queen hasn’t left,” says Lehmann. “We want to be adding extra storage to their hive, whether that’s in the form of frames that are designed for babies or adding honey boxes to store surplus nectar.”
To bee or not to bee
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.
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 – butterflies, beetles and wild bees – and the honeybee story is complicated.
What’s 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. “They put their hands right into the hive and focus on the bees,” Manning says.
