BEE KC table including honey for sale and section of bee hive (Rachel Meng)

Rachel Meng
Editorial Intern

   The annual Pendleton Heights Community Orchard Bee Installation at 2617 Lexington Ave fostered neighborhood education on Friday, June 26, with information tables from local organizations. 

   Alongside their partnership with BEE KC, a nonprofit which maintains 150 honeybee hives and additional native bee homes, the orchard has been doing an installation for five years with its sister event, an August  honey harvest. 

   “Bees are very important for our ecosystem and our food chain. Most of the food we eat doesn’t get produced if we don’t have a healthy bee population,” said Shannon Colligan, a community orchard steward. “The orchard is a great resource for food locally grown in our community and it’s available for everybody.”

   While the honeybees are not native to the U.S., following European settlers and reaching Missouri around 1830, they are crucial for pollinating 30 to 80% of food according to David Friesen, the founder of BEE KC. 

   “Honeybees are such powerhouse pollinators,” said Friesen. “The honeybees don’t pollinate a lot of plants that native [bees] do and vice versa, so there’s a lot of great Missouri native plants that honeybees won’t touch. Both [native and honeybees] are important.”

   Friesen started this nonprofit with the goal of building community and education surrounding bees, which involves school workshops and community hives. BEE KC has numerous beehives around the city, including urban farms, KU Medical Center’s campus, the Overland Park location of Q39 and the Pendleton Heights Community Orchard. 

   The bee installation included tables for Compost Collective KC, Missouri Department of Conservation, the Missouri River Bird Observatory, KC Family Bike Ride, and the Mattie Rhodes Center. PH Coffee also served free snow cones and hot dogs throughout the event. 

Path of tables at the Bee Installation including the raffle (left) and BEE KC (right), (Rachel Meng)

   “Sometimes with urbanized areas, it can feel like trying to do conservation work maybe out of reach, but something as simple as getting native plants in the ground can reap wonderful benefits over time,” said Lilli Davis, the Community Liaison for the Missouri Department of Conservation.

   While honeybee hives have increased within the U.S., about 30% of those are migratory, being trucked around the country to pollinate food crops. The increase of hives is only due to them being split up to meet pollination needs. 

   “Honey has flatlined or decreased and the number of hives increasing is only due to the death and having to pollinate the food which we’ve grown in areas we’ve clear cut everything else,” said Friesen. “You look around and think, nature, you see some trees, but how many of these trees are native to Missouri?”

   Planting native plants can be good for all pollinators, including native species of birds. Tessa Thomas, the director of community conservation program for the Missouri River Bird Observatory, suggested seven simple actions for everyday people to help birds and other pollinators, including using less single-use plastics, planting native plants (ex. common boneset, Joe Pye weed, purple coneflower, etc.) avoiding pesticides, drinking shade-grown coffee, keeping cats indoors and turning lights off at night.

   The community orchard is always looking for volunteers according to Whitney Barnardo, who has been a PH Greenspace Steward for five years. Volunteers are able to help with orchard work days each third Saturday of the month, clean up events or becoming a community orchard steward themselves.

   “Sometimes it’s as simple as picking up trash. People can do that anytime of day,” said Barnardo. “A lot of people dance that fine line between being terrified of bees and intrigued, so we try to give a safe opportunity to educate people, they’re not out to get us and all the things they do for our ecosystem, especially a community orchard and pollination.”

A close up of the bee hive with Friesen giving them smoke. The smoke causes them to eat honey and allows the beekeeper to move them fairly harmlessly. Before fire was harnessed, smoke would have typically been a forest fire, meaning bees would either have to live off their produced honey or migrate. With the smell of smoke, they are unable to communicate as well, so they go back into the hive, according to Friesen. (photo by Rachel Meng)

   The eventual goal of BEE KC is to “…get into native stuff, rewilding and also advocacy,” said Friessen. 

   Though the initial bee installation was rescheduled due to rain, the next community event for the orchard, the honey harvest, will be on schedule, set tentatively to occur on August 8.