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Located in the No. 1 beekeeping state,
students at California State University, Fresno are making a buzz on
campus with the premier Fresno State Honey that will be ready for
Thanksgiving.
After launching a beekeeping project with the Plant Science Department
in the spring, Bee Club members, who began their first extractions
earlier this semester, will begin bottling honey today, said Dr. Andrew
Lawson, a plant science professor and entomologist and adviser for the
new club.
Approximately 400 bottles were produced
in today’s first official run, with students presenting the first jar of
honey to Dr. Charles
Boyer, dean of the
College of
Agricultural Sciences
and Technology. Limited quantities of the honey should be
in the Fresno State Farm Market on Wednesday, Nov. 22. The 8-ounce
bottles will be sold for $5.95 each.
Proceeds will benefit the university’s
agriculture programs.
The project comes at a time when the nation is facing a honeybee
shortage, according to the National Research Council, which reports the
numbers of honeybees, wild bumble bees and other pollinators have
declined, raising the risk of plant extinction and threatening the
nation's food crops.
The nationwide shortage is significant enough that honeybees had to be
brought in from Canada and Mexico last year for the first time since
1922, when the Honeybee Act banned imports for fear they would introduce
non-native pests, according to the report.
The Fresno State honey project began in May after sisters Barbara and
Evan Jessup approached Lawson about establishing a venue on campus to
keep bees. The Jessups, who major in geology and chemistry respectively,
are from a Big Creek beekeeping family.
Lawson agreed to let them proceed and they rounded up $600 worth of
donations from local suppliers. The school farm purchased another $600
worth of supplies. Donated hives and frames came from Dadant and Sons
Inc., an Illinois-based beekeeping supplier that has an office in
Fresno.
Today, six beehives – with 30,000-60,000 insects per hive – are being
kept throughout the orchards on the school farm, with room for
expansion.
“With this new project, students will receive a hands-on experience
concerning the beekeeping industry and its importance to the agriculture
industry,” Lawson said. “They will also take part in vertical
integration, which is the growing, processing, packing and selling of
honey.”
The club has grown to about 17 members who learn beekeeping practices
that are critical to the region’s agriculture and increase chances for a
career as a beekeeper.
“Just like water and sunlight, pollination by honeybees is vital to the
production of many crops,” said Lawson. The school farm alone contracts
for about 100 hives each year. “Without honeybees, fruit trees would
bear few fruits, vine crops would bear small fruits that do not fill out
and berries would tend to be small and misshaped,” he said.
Typically, most hives in California are rented one or more times a year
for pollination. California has the nation’s largest beekeeping industry
and also is the national leader in production of honey, averaging 20
million pounds a year, Lawson said.
Lawson said the farm has purchased beekeeper suits complete with veils
and gloves so that six students at a time can be working with the hives.
Food safety issues with the bottling process are handled by the
Department of Food Science and Nutrition also in the College of
Agriculture.
Extraction involves uncapping the honeycomb, held in rectangular frames,
and then spinning the honey out in an extractor (essentially a large
centrifuge). The bottling involves filtering the honey to remove any
particulates, then pouring it into bottles using a bottling machine
provided by the Department of Food Science and Nutrition.
The jars will carry the Fresno State orchards label and initially will
be sold only through the Fresno State Farm Market since quantity is
limited, said Dr. Ganesan Srinivasan, director of the University
Agricultural Laboratory at Fresno State who oversees the university’s
various agricultural enterprises that supply the market.
The Farm Market on the southeast corner of Barstow and Chestnut avenues
is open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday-Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays and
11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sundays. For more information, call the Farm Market at
559.278.4511.
(University Communications student-intern Megan Jacobsen contributed to
this copy.)
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