The busy bees at Bellarmine foster biodiversity

Commercial honey bee colonies could face extreme losses this year, according to Washington State University.

A Louisville beekeeping club said it isn’t as concerned for its bees.

What You Need To Know
Commercial honey bee colonies could face greater losses in 2025, according to Washington State Unversity

Students started the Beekeeping Club at Bellarmine University in 2022

The bee population at Bellarmine fluctuates throughout the seasonsBellarmine Beekeepers aren’t as concerned for their bees, because they aren’t commercial bees

The bees are busy buzzing at Bellarmine University.

“You see how gentle they are,” said Dr. Kate Bulinski, professor of geosciences in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Bellarmine University.

Puffs of smoke keep the honey bees calm.

“When the bees are communicating to each other, they use pheromones, and the smoke actually blocks their ability to smell each other’s pheromones. So, then they get kind of disoriented, and they want to go retreat back into the hive,” Bulinski said.

Students started the beekeeping club in 2022 with about five frames of bees.

“You let them just start to grow their colony over time and the bees will actually produce wax and honeycomb and start to fill it with their brood, so their babies, and then nectar and honey, and you let them go for a little while,” she said.

Two years later, when the bees were ready, students harvested the honey.

“We did not start our first honey harvest until last fall, and we’ve got so much honey from it. We sold it, at Bellarmine in under 30 minutes,” said Nicole Diaz, president of the Bellarmine Beekeeping Club.

Entomologists at Washington State University have reported that commercial honey bee colony losses in the U.S. could reach 60 to 70% this year, which is ten to 20% higher than normal.

“If you have 40, 50, 60% of your hives dying, that’s 40, 50, 60% of your potential profits that you’re not making,” said Bulinski.

She said the population of her hives fluctuates throughout the seasons, but since they aren’t commercial hives, she isn’t worried.

“I’m not as concerned we can spend a lot more of our time and energy kind of nurturing our two hives for demonstration purposes,” Bulinski said.

WSU said it’s too early in the year to know what’s causing expected losses to be higher this year. The Bellarmine beekeepers are doing what they can to help their bees thrive.

“We monitor for things like hive beetles and mites and treat for those sorts of things to try to give them the best chance that we can to get them, through the year and through the winter,” Bulinski said.

Hopefully, these bees will continue to pollinate Bellarmine’s farm and neighboring areas for years to come.

Bellarmine University is recognized as a Bee Campus USA. That means the school is putting pollinator gardens around campus to promote native bee populations.

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