Officials hope bees will thrive with new hives
Rooftop apiary part of an experiment by water utility
WASHINGTON — It’s a blazing hot summer day, and Bill Brower and Toni Burnham are standing on the roof of one of the myriad buildings that dot the campus of Blue Plains, the vast wastewater treatment plant on the banks of the Anacostia River.
In large veiled hats and thick, white long-sleeve shirts, they’re hardly dressed for theweather.
But their focus today is not on the temperature outside. It’s on the inside of the 15 blue and white bee hives in front of them.
A new queen recently was introduced, and there’s a chance shemayhave been rejected by the colony. Brower, a project manager who specializes in sustainability issues at D.C. Water, and Burnham, president of the D.C. Beekeepers Alliance, are here to assess the fallout.
“It’s like a soap opera with 50,000characters, and we have to figure out if it’s “Days of Our Lives” or “Game of Thrones,” Burnham said.
Bees? Living on the roof of North America’s largest wastewater treatment plant? “Normally, you don’t associate wastewater treatment plants with something sweet,” D.C. Water spokesman Vincent Morris said.
But the rooftop apiary on the 140-acre campus is part of an experiment by the utility to see whether bees can thrive in such an unconventional setting. The hope is that if itworks here, it can work at thousands of similar facilities across the United States.
If you’re a bee, it can be hard to find a decent home in urban areas like Washington — too much noise, too many humans enough open land trees.
As it turns out, D.C. Water’s campus, bordered on one side by the Anacostia River and the other by Oxon HillFarm, is not a bad place to be if you’re a bee.
Brower and Chris Peot, D.C. Water’s director of resource recovery, hit on the idea of opening an apiary about three years ago. The pair thought it would be a way to build links with the urban agriculture community, promote their goal of a more sustainable campus and help bees.
They reached out to the D.C. Beekeepers Alliance, a resource for apiarists in the region. And soon, with the help ofBurnham, theywere in the bee business.
Beekeeping has become a popular pastime for city types, including some at Washington’s most famous addresses.
Michelle Obama installed the first White House beehive in 2009, and Melania Trump has said it will remain on the grounds, producing honey for the first family and their guests.
In June, Karen Pence, wife of Vice President Pence, installed a new hive at their residence, giving more than 15,000 bees free run of the U.S. Naval Observatory campus. In Virginia, George Mason University launched its Honey Bee Initiative in 2012.
As both women noted, bees these days can use all the help they can get. The and not and tall insects, crucial to the production of crops including almonds, squashandwatermelon, have been the victims of both man-made and naturally occurring problems.
According to statistics offered by the White House, the number of honeybee hives in the U.S., has declined from 6 million during the 1940s to only about 2.5 million today.
The problem is worldwide — making experiments like the one at D.C. Water useful for those looking at how to provide bees with livable habitats.
In, D.C. alone, there are 300 hives registered with the city, which gave the goahead for city dwellers on non-federal property to keep bees in 2015.
The effort at D.C. Water has not been without its challenges: Some employees worried more bees would equal more stings — fears that have proved unfounded. Morris said the winged residents have proved to be “remarkably tame” — more focused on theirwork than on tangling withD.C. Waterworkers.
Beekeeping is not easy, even under ideal circumstances, and the question of where to put the hives on the water utility’s massive campus proved tricky.
“Whenwe can’t put bees where they want to be, we have to figure out how to manage them,” Burnham said. “Bees are like anyone else — they need food, water and goodweather.”