Moving a building’s occupants elsewhere during renovations is always a problem, but when the University of Mary Washington started planning a makeover for Monroe Hall, a landmark 1911 academic building with 40-foot Corinthian columns on its porch, the facilities staff had a stickier problem than usual: One of the column capitals was home to a big honeybee colony.
“We knew we would need to figure out what to do with them as we planned for the renovation of Monroe,” said Bruce Blair, facilities services inspector for the university, in Fredericksburg, Va. “I’ve known about the bee colony for the past 16 years, and they may have been there for more than 20 years.”
The university hired a beekeeper, John Adams, who brought a vacuum system and a truck with a lift. He and Mr. Blair went up in the lift together, dressed in protective clothing, and collected about 4,000 bees one day and 6,000—including the queen—the next. When they cut away a portion of the column, they found what they described as an extensive honeycomb, more than three feet long.
Mr. Adams carefully cut up the comb, whose cells were full of honey and the colony’s larvae, and transferred the pieces to bee-box frames. Then the entire colony was relocated to a rural area, outside nearby Richmond. (U. of Mary Washington photos)
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8 Responses to You Think Professors Are Quick to Anger? Try 10,000 Bees
22108469 - June 25, 2010 at 4:03 pm
I don’t get the headline. Did the bees form a committee to fight their eviction? Deny the administration’s right to renovate? Refuse to serve the queen? Pretend they were all workers?
ludwig51 - June 25, 2010 at 4:28 pm
The bee keeper was really named John Adams?
12067877 - June 25, 2010 at 4:53 pm
I am pleased to see relocation as the choice instead of exterminating the bees. More than two-thirds of our food comes from pollination. Honeybees play a vital role. But colony collapse disorder has seriously reduced the honeybee population. I salute the school for the cost and effort they spent to save them. Thank you, University of Mary Washington!
11272784 - June 25, 2010 at 5:03 pm
Nice move – and they’re not even a land-grant university. See, academics CAN learn new things!
janyregina - June 26, 2010 at 4:41 pm
What about the bee’s right as a colony?
raza_khan - June 26, 2010 at 6:26 pm
Okay… No offense to the bees, what is the relevance of this article to the Chronicle articles or its purpose?After reading this article, I had a flashback:Trying to read headlines on CNN website on the day it was filled with iphone release. The website was all about its release as if the world had stopped moving.Editorial review needs to be more careful to what it allows to be published here!Raza___________________________Raza Khan, Ph.D., P.D.SciencesCarroll Community CollegeWestminster, MD
lhedlund - June 28, 2010 at 10:28 am
I love the pieces in Buildings & Grounds. Why are there so many comments from people who want to edit what is published? Just don’t read the pieces you don’t have an interest in. A University is dynamic and I’m glad that The Chronicle has expanded the topics covered.
12022055 - July 12, 2010 at 12:46 pm
A quick search of Mission site:chronicle.com did not really give me a statement of the Chronicle’s mission. But it seems that anything relevant to higher education would be on target. While issues of student faculty or admin faculty interactions might be the mainstream, it seems that funding, accreditation, and yes, buildings and grounds are all concerns that should be reported. Somewhere, some administrator has read this article and it may help them when they face critters of their own.