The buzz at Black Bear Solar Farm in Buckingham County is a pilot program featuring four hives with 45,000 bees and one queen apiece. Tim Eberly speaks for Dominion Power, which owns the property.
“We are trying to find different ways to add uses to this land so we keep the land in Virginia’s farming community,” he explains.
Each hive produces 40 to 120 pounds of honey in a season, but beekeeper Chuck Burden – who maintains 200 hives in the Shenandoah Valley – says this property isn’t profitable yet. It does, however, allow him to meet area farmers and explain the need to protect land and plants for pollinators.
“Educating them about honeybees, educating them about the use of herbicides, insecticides, fungicides and all that,” Burden says.
White clover, dandelions and a number of wildflowers grow between the solar panels, and Dominion did check on neighboring fields to be sure they weren’t sprayed with harmful chemicals and could benefit the bees.
“These bees have a foraging radius of about 3 miles,” Eberly says, “so we had to make sure that there was ample food, not just for the bees that we were putting here but for the existing bees,” Eberly says.
Not only are the neighbors certified safe for bees, but Burden notes Dominion has put up a fence to protect the hives.
“Local beekeepers are having a lot of bear damage in the last 4-5 years.”
The bears aren’t after honey by the way. It’s the protein-rich bee larva they crave.
For their part, the bees will pollinate crops growing in surrounding Buckingham County. The 13-acre site is covered with 4,400 solar panels, and Dominion hopes to double the number of hives next spring.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
