PLAINFIELD TWP., Pa. — With temperatures topping out around 80 degrees Monday across the Lehigh Valley, it’s hard to imagine preparing for the coming winter.
But, that’s exactly what the honey bees at Waste Management’s Grand Central Landfill Education Center were doing.
“Just like a squirrel hiding nuts,” said Kevin Kelly, Grand Central’s habitat leader, as he held up a golden honeycomb-covered frame enveloped in moving bees. “But, they're making their food for the winter.”
Kelly, along with John Stone, a beekeeper, held an educational celebration Monday afternoon in honor of World Bee Day at the center, 891 Grand Central Road. Acknowledged each year on May 20, environmentalists and advocates around the globe use the day to educate residents about the importance of pollinators to the environment, as well as local food systems.
John Stone and Kevin Kelly pull a frame full of bees from a hive. pic.twitter.com/gmacgGaVBp
— Molly Bilinski, artisanal sentence crafter (@MollyBilinski) May 20, 2024
For the folks at Grand Central, it was the first time guests were welcomed to check out eight of the center’s hives. Secured behind a chain link fence less than a quarter of a mile down one of the center’s trails, a sign several feet in front of the stacked bee boxes reads “Please [be] aware and kind,” with a simple illustration of a honey bee in place of the verb, “be.”
“It's a citizen science project,” said Adrienne Fors, senior community relations specialist for Waste Management’s greater mid-Atlantic region. “We want to be able to bring education out here so that we can teach people, and maybe inspire others to do the same, because it's important.”
‘Essential for sustaining agricultural production’
There are more than 400 species of bees that call Pennsylvania home, but the bees most residents are more familiar with, honey bees, are not native.
Brought over by European colonists for wax centuries ago, honey bees are used today for a variety of tasks and products, from pollination to honey. For the past two decades, honey bee populations across the U.S. have declined, with researchers citing climate change, pesticides and disease as key factors.
During winter of 2022 to 2023, an estimated 37.4% of managed honey bee colonies across the U.S. were lost, according to the nonprofit Bee Informed Partnership. It was an increase of more than 13% from the year prior.
It marked the second-highest year of winter loss since the survey began in 2008.
However, honey bees make up only one of several different families, with dozens of species, of bees across the commonwealth.
Wild bees serve as natural pollinators, and are key for agriculture.
“Wild bees, which include native and naturalized bees, pollinate a variety of crops, including apples, pears, nuts, strawberries, tomatoes, peppers, blueberries, squash and melons,” according to Penn State Extension researchers. “In areas of Pennsylvania, wild bees already provide the majority of pollination for some summer vegetable crops.
“Conserving wild bee populations is essential for sustaining agricultural production in Pennsylvania.”
Store-bought, local and landfill
At Grand Central, just one of the eight bee boxes, if full, could easily hold 40,000 bees, Stone said. Asked if there could be 100,000 bees at the hives, he replied, "Easily."
“By the middle of the summer, it’s going to be a lot more,” he said. “If I can keep up with them.”
Hundreds of bees flew in, out and around the hives, not paying any mind to the visitors, as Stone and Kelly explained that male bees are called drones, while the workers are all female.
Plucking a drone from a frame, Stone pointed to the large eyes, which they need in order to mate in the air with the colony’s queen, called a “nuptial flight.”
“If they actually, successfully mate, they die right away,” Kelly said, switching gears to show the worker bees. “All that is called honeycomb and they either store nectar in there, or they store pollen, or they put their eggs in there.”
And, Grand Central’s bees have a lot of room to roam — there are 212 acres of habitat.
After learning the parts of a hive and the bees that inhabit it, visitors tasted three different kinds of honey: store-bought, local and landfill.
It might come as a surprise, but the honey made by the landfill’s bees was the sweetest.
