Bees and the City

There are beehives on Penn’s campus, but finding them is no easy feat. Past Franklin Field, over a set of railroad tracks, and around the Hamlin Tennis Center, they’re tucked away in Penn Park. Once you’ve made it that far, you’re close, but still, you can hardly notice the bees’ presence. After all, the hives are hidden away in a dell behind thick brush, in an otherwise unassuming wooden shed. But once you trek through the overgrowth and open the door, a new world is uncovered. 

Inside are three hives, each several feet tall, resting above the ground on cinder blocks. Bees are everywhere, going in and out of the hives through doors towards the bottom. They buzz around and pass through the shed’s chicken–wire ceiling, going out to pollinate plants or returning with fresh food for their colony. 

Bees are always at work trying to help their hive, according to Andrew Luong (C ‘26) and Gloria Cheng (N ‘26 W ‘26), the co–presidents of Penn Beekeeping Club, which tends to the hives in Penn Park. Their goal is to support and protect the bees against any outside threats. But they say that this job is made easier by the bees’ industriousness. 

“Bees can sustain themselves very well,” Andrew says. “They know how to pollinate, how to make their own honey, [and] make their own food. We don’t need to do much. They’re even very clean. They like to … bring all their dead bodies outside of the hive. They bring everything that has a possibility of being a virus outside of the hive.” 

The club began in 2016, originally just for discussion of bees, hives, and related topics. But a year later, the club obtained its first hive, and was off to the races providing hands–on access to pollinators on campus. Though the club revolves mainly around the hives at Penn Park—including regular hive visits in the late spring and early fall and feeding bees sugar water and other substances throughout the colder months—Gloria notes that the club is first and foremost concerned with the love of bees. To do this, and appeal to a wide range of students (the shed can fit less than ten people at a time) the club hosts multiple events that don’t feature the bees, such as a trivia event and a screening of The Bee Movie. 

While a past president and other members of the board had kept bees in childhood, neither Andrew nor Gloria had done so prior to arriving at Penn. The club is steadfast that no experience is required to join. Penn Beekeeping is confident they can teach a newbie everything they’ll need to know. 

Education is a key part of the beekeeping community. The Philadelphia Beekeepers Guild has helped Penn’s club by providing mentorship to student beekeepers alongside hosting its own events and training for the greater Philadelphia community. They also help to maintain the club’s hives over the summer. Both Gloria and Andrew believe teaching others about the importance of bees is integral to Penn Beekeeping. They'll even remove a frame from the hive to bring to events. 

This was also the case for Karen Cherubini, who helped raise bees as part of a program at Germantown Friends School for several years and still keeps bees as part of the Spring Garden's Community Garden. She was first introduced to beekeeping at a professional development conference for Quaker schools in the Philadelphia area. She recounts being enthralled by the sight of someone creating a bee beard in a screened–in tent inside a school auditorium. 

From there, Cherubini was hooked, and started taking classes with the Guild to learn more about beekeeping. But before bringing hives to Germantown Friends, it took several years in order to check the necessary logistical boxes. With the help of a former student, beekeeping at the school began. She says that it’s always enjoyable to show people—especially those who hadn’t previously seen inside a hive—how bees collaborate to sustain their colony. 

“Seeing how the entire colony works together in one common goal, and everybody knows their job, and everybody does their job, it’s just an amazing life lesson for everybody to see how social insects live,” she says. “There’s the science of it, and the life cycle and the [social] structure of the colony … and then there’s the actual hands–on piece, which is just a fun thing to do.”

Beyond just their beautiful hexagonally honeycombed hives and intricate societies, bees serve important roles in the greater ecosystems of Philadelphia and beyond. Globally, bees pollinate 70 out of the 100 most important crops needed for human food production. On campus, Andrew likes to think that their bees help to pollinate local flora, including the produce grown at nearby Penn Farm. 

Pennsylvania is not bereft of indigenous pollinators. Penn State Entomology Professor and Director of Pollinator Programming for the Penn State Arboretum Harland Patch says that there are nearly 1,000 bee species native to the area of the continental United States east of the Mississippi River. While this is significantly less than the approximately 3,000 who come from the western part of the country, many of these species provide important services to the Keystone State’s agriculture. 

Other regions, such as Northern Europe or California’s Central Valley, rely on importing honey bees for pollination. In contrast, Patch says that there are around 50 native species that will pollinate different crops. This is partially due to the variety of specialty crops grown in the state like cucumbers, tomatoes, and apples, rather than monoculture farms that grow staple grain crops such as corn or soybeans. Additionally, the landscape of Pennsylvania serves to create a favorable atmosphere for bees. 

“Our farms tend to be [around] 1,000 acres smaller than in the Dakotas,” Patch says. “Most are family run, and most are in very heterogeneous landscapes. A stream runs through it, the edge of a forest, an old field that makes [this] landscape a great place for bees.”

These factors combine to make Pennsylvania very lucky in terms of pollination. Patch says that compared to other areas with large–scale agriculture, Pennsylvania doesn’t face the same pollen limitations or reliance on farmers bringing in honeybees. 

This isn’t to say that domesticated honeybees are useless. While Patch notes that an individual honeybee is less efficient than a single bee of a native species, such as a bumblebee, their sheer numbers aid in pollination. 

“I’ll give you an example of blueberries,” he describes. “You just get so many numbers in a very short period of time during blueberry bloom, and that really helps you. That assures the grower that they’ll get the pollination they need to set those blueberries.”

When it comes to involving honeybees in agriculture, though, things aren’t all positive. There have been stories about competition between native bees and domesticated honeybees for resources. Andrew expressed this concern when discussing the hives at Penn Park, saying “Right here is a field, and there are [not many] pollinators nearby at all. And we usually want to introduce pollinators in places where there are no pollinators, and so we introduced our European honeybees without worrying about … competing with other pollinators in this area.”

But Patch encourages people to see the wider picture of pollinator communities. While a domesticated honeybee can outcompete a native bee to pollinate a single flower, he noted that on a larger scale, the effect isn’t as large, and should be studied on a case–by–case basis, especially given that most honeybees in Pennsylvania don’t live off the land in natural landscapes. 

The bees kept in the Penn Park hives are not native to this continent. Rather, they are European honeybees, which have been domesticated for thousands of years and are native to the woodlands and meadows of Germany. But even across an ocean, in an urban area like Philadelphia, these domesticated honeybees have characteristics that can help them. 

Andrew says that these bees are “more consistent” than native bees, and don’t move their hives around as much, which makes it easier for beekeepers to care for them and protects bees from some of the dangers of the human world. Honeybees can also travel further than their native brethren; in more industrialized areas, where plants are less dense, honeybees can cover the ground necessary to provide enough food for the colony. This is aided by features like pollinator hotels, constructed around Penn Park as a place of rest for pollinators before returning home. 

The other amazing benefit honeybees can bring beekeepers and beyond is in the name: honey. Penn Beekeeping harvests honey from their hives at least once per year, and sells it to members of the Penn community. Gloria says that honey is one of the main reasons she joined Penn Beekeeping, recalling distant relatives who kept bees in their backyard and would send it to her as a child. Now in the club, she is further aware of the importance of consuming real, local honey. 

“Something I learned when I joined the club is that the majority of honey is actually fake, meaning that it’s sugar and water, and the majority of the remainder [of] what you buy in the grocery store is typically just like a combination of as many varieties as possible because […] they want you to have a consistent taste all the time,” she says. “But in reality, the honey that you get any two times you buy it, if it’s not [from the same harvest], it should taste different, because over the year, it goes from light to dark and very flowery to maple syrupy.” 

Andrew adds that eating honey from local bees provides health benefits, particularly to help with allergies. Locally produced honey often contains traces of pollen from local vegetation, and consuming it can temper the body’s immune response and lessen the reaction to allergens. Cherubini also harvests bee products—including honey, candles, and lip balm—and reinvests proceeds to continue the project of beekeeping. 

Despite the benefits to raising bees, it’s hard work. Of Penn Beekeeping’s three hives, only one survived last winter; Gloria explains that typically, only around 40% of bees in a given hive can survive the harsh temperatures of a Philadelphia winter. While club members try to nurture the colonies through the cold months by feeding them sugar water and other substances, these efforts do not always pay off. 

Another part of bee husbandry is keeping them protected from pests. Andrew and Gloria say that they regularly have to check for mites among the hives, and treat the bees with medicine when they find an infection. Cherubini notes that there are a wide variety of honeybee maladies, and that recently she was forced to clear out dead comb after moth larvae hatched inside a hive and killed it.

A third difficulty comes from humans. People are allergic to bees, and when visiting Penn Beekeeping’s hives, one has to remain suited up from head to toe to prevent stings. Cherubini says that a major challenge when introducing bees to an area is “convincing the community that it’s okay to have bee hives.” Additionally, the urban environment of Penn Park—located alongside a railroad line—exposes the bees to sounds and vibrations that are unpleasant for them. 

Furthermore, climate change poses an existential threat to bee populations. Environmental Science professor Leigh Stearns says that human activities are causing Earth’s climate to change at a rate that makes it difficult–to–impossible for other species to evolve in time. Over the next decades, if current trends hold, Stearns believes that the Philadelphia area will get progressively warmer. 

Patch echoes this sentiment, sharing that by the end of the 21st century, Pennsylvania’s climate could resemble what is currently seen in places like Georgia or Louisiana. This will lead to a reset of pollinator communities, as species which thrive in colder climates will move north, and other species will move into the mid–Atlantic from further south. Patch does note that more research is needed to evaluate whether climate change will force Pennsylvania’s farmers to shift away from native–species pollination, but believes that farms will need to be resilient in order to adapt. 

Even in the face of all of these challenges, raising bees is still a very fulfilling activity. Cherubini says that she always enjoys going into the hive and feeling the bees moving around her. For many reasons, Gloria calls raising bees in a place like Philadelphia a bucket–list item and something she’ll remember forever. As a fun activity, a teaching tool, and a way to support local agriculture, bees are spreading joy and countering climate change, one hive at a time.