Learn about Engineering’s Honey Bees
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The Engineering Division is learning about honey bees! Did you know, the Engineering Division has honeybee hives on the city’s west side? After a lot of time and education, the division found the perfect spot to locate their honey bee hives. Although there are bees all around us, the division located the bees in a prairie off of Nesbitt Road and Maple Grove Drive, in a safe place, distanced from residents, where they’re free to fly and “bee.”
Process
Setting up bees takes time and education, but is a fairly simple process. To start a hive, there are frames that are then put into boxes. The bees will build off of the frames as they begin to bring pollen back to the hives and turn it into honey. Honey bees provide more benefits than just the delicious product they create. Honey bees, although not native pollinators, are pollinators nonetheless. Honey bees specifically are essential to pollinating farmer’s crops and other native plant species. This helps crops and plants grow and reproduce.
Hives take a little bit of time to get going. The bees feed off of honey through the winter when they hibernate. After a couple of years the bees have excess honey that they don’t need for the winter. This is the honey that is harvested toward the end of the summer. In the harvesting process, bees are brushed away from the full honey frames and left at the hive. While the full frames of honey are put into an extractor, which spins the honey out. This leaves the frames empty and ready to be used for the next season. The honey is then strained to remove any large pieces of wax, and then bottled to create the final product.
Honey bees are an important pollinator, however it is important to recognize all different types of pollinators, and help support them by planting native plants.
Watch the Honey Harvest and set up videos with Engineering Staff, and consider planting native plants to support our pollinators this season!