In The News

Pity the hardworking honeybee.

People often mistake it for the yellow jacket — a carnivorous wasp —which can sting you more than once.

If a bee stings you, however, its barbed stinger tears away from its body, causing mortal damage, when the bee flies away. 

"It's not in their interest to sting you, because they die," said Sherie Edenborn, assistant professor of microbiology at Chatham University.

Eager to ease the fear of bees, Edenborn describes the herbivorous honeybee as "gentle" and "easy-going."

Indeed, Edenborn often goes without protective gear when she visits the thousands of Russian and Italian honeybees now making honey on Chatham's new 388-acre Eden Hall campus in Richland Township.

Edenborn and Gary Marshall, Chatham professor of anatomy and physiology, plan to rent a centrifuge this month to harvest the bees' honey by spinning each hive's 10 trays of honeycombs.

"This is going to be our first extraction," Edenborn said. "We'll have enough to give people a taste."

Marshall looks forward to trying a sample.

"Fall honey is my favorite," he said. "It's dark and very flavorful."

Edenborn and Marshall hope to eventually bottle enough honey for use in salad dressings and other foods served to Chatham students.

"You can use honey in a lot of Asian foods," said Dan Dooley of Parkhurst Dining Services, Chatham's executive chef.

Parkhurst Dining Services bought 20 shares of honey — priced $10 per share — to help establish Chatham's apiary in Richland. The Parkhurst firm hopes to eventually get 20 pounds of honey in return.

"We're hoping, in the future, by investing in the hives, that we'll be able to serve Eden Hall's honey to our student, faculty and staff population," said Leslie Ekstrand, general manager for Parkhurst Dining Services at Chatham.

The hives sit next to a small white building, one field away from the school's organic flower and vegetable garden.

"As the school grows and there's more land deeded over to agriculture, we'll be more able to partner with them and get food for the dining halls," Ekstrand said. "That's the goal."

Former Chatham gardening teacher Kerri LaCharite led efforts to establish the Chatham hives and organic garden before she recently departed the university to pursue a doctoral degree and work for the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank.

The bees — all known as Apis mellifera, meaning "sweet carrier" — live in three box-like, wooden hives near an orchard of fruit trees off Ridge Road.

Edenborn and Marshall visit the hives weekly to check on the bees' well-being.

Chatham's bee hives and organic garden underscore the university's mission to make its Eden Hall campus "a living laboratory to address the social, economic and environmental concerns that the world faces," in the words of Chatham President Esther Barazzone.

The bee hives, for example, give students the opportunity to study the anti-microbial properties of honey, and factors that  may  affect  the  health  of  bee  colonies.

"An apiary is a great way to integrate studies related to food security, bee conservation and sustainable agriculture," Edenborn said.

  "Sustainability is fundamentally about the capacity for life to persist in a world with finite resources," Edenborn said. "To do this we must be good stewards of our environment and appreciate the interconnectedness of all living and non-living parts of our world, including the bees.

"People often think of honeybees because of the wonderful sugary treat that they create for us. What many people do not realize, however, is that honeybees and other animals are responsible for pollinating more than 30-percent of the food crops that are produced worldwide," Edenborn said. "If you love chocolate, coffee, apples, blueberries and many other staples of the dinner table, then you should thank the bees."