The Secret Life of Syracuse Bees What’s the buzz about SU honey? Written by Anya Sywulak | Photography by Erica Legaard
M
eet the honey bee. Golden yellow and brown with fluffy, oval bodies, honey bees are responsible for pollinating a third of all our food. Unfortunately, honey bee populations have been on the decline in recent years. It’s not looking good for these adorable pollinators. Without honey bees, we could see some of our favorite produce disappearing from grocery store shelves. Imagine a world with no almonds, cherries, blueberries or cucumbers. Luckily for us foodies, people are working to save the bees, including some at Syracuse University. In 2019, public health professor Lisa Olson Gugerty had an idea to bring honey bees to Syracuse University. With help from the Campus as a Lab for Sustainability (CALS) Grant, six hives were placed on SU’s South Campus containing about 300,000 bees. Proposed to start in the Spring of 2020, Olsen-Gugerty said the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic threw a wrench in her plans. Despite all that, the SU honey bees still had a pretty successful first year, and that first batch of honey sold out in a matter of weeks. “The bees are gathering the majority of their spring honey from Linden and basswood trees, and so the honey has a very distinct color and smell and taste. It's pale, pale yellow, like golden with a green hue to it and it smells like menthol. The first time I opened 36 | baked
up the spinner…it was just a big waft of like a menthol cough drop, it is the most amazing, delicious and unique scent. And then you taste it and it's just amazing.” Olsen-Gugerty says of the honey. Last year, the hives produced seven and a half gallons of honey in the spring and another five in the fall. Spring and fall honey tastes different, so I would recommend trying to get your hands on a bottle of both before it all sells out. 2021 was an unseasonably wet summer where the bees tended to stay indoors, but hopefully in future seasons the yield will be larger and there will be more honey to go around. But the honey and the bees are just a small part of a much larger sustainability plan being put in motion at SU. As the sustainability coordinator for the university, Meg Lowe was able to get the school registered with Bee Campus USA, an initiative by the Xerces Society. The name is a little bit misleading, as you don’t actually need bees to participate. The goals of the program are to increase quantities of native plants, provide nesting sites for native pollinators, and reduce the use of harmful pesticides. “When we looked at the campus, what we found was that there were a lot of similarities for the requirements and things that we were already doing, which is why it was so easy. We didn't have to reinvent the wheel. It was one of those things where we're like, well, we're already
