Bee Hotel Opens In Western Loudoun To Help With Pollinating

LOUDOUN COUNTY, VA — JK Community Farm opened a “bee hotel” on its 150-acre nonprofit farm in western Loudoun County, providing a special nesting site to draw more species of bees to help with pollination.

Prior to installing the 6-feet-by-6-feet bee hotel, the farm already had seven honeybee hives to help increase the declining honeybee population in Loudoun. Bees help pollinate and are important to food production.

Honey bees are facing a condition called colony collapse disorder, which is killing off large numbers of them. Many pollinator populations of bees are in decline, and this decline is attributed in large part to a loss in feeding and nesting habitats.

In western Loudoun, native bees nest in hollow logs, dead trees and in the ground. But with increased development, native bees have fewer places to nest. By creating special nesting sites like bee hotels, JK Community Farm learned it could accommodate many different species of bees.

JK Community Farm applied for a community grant opportunity from ChangeX, funded by Microsoft. After submitting its application, the farm received funding for the bee hotel.

Bee hotels often attract mason bees, orchard bees and leaf cutter bees. While these bees do not make honey or live in a hive, they do serve as pollinators.

JK Community Farm placed the bee hotel out of the way of heavy traffic. The hotel will be a part of the farm’s future food education nature walk.

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JK Community Farm, started in 2018 to help address hunger in the D.C. area, is located a couple miles south of Round Hill on Airmont Road. It donates 100 percent of its yield to area food banks.

The farm began when JK Moving Services CEO Chuck Kuhn wanted to expand his family and company's philanthropic investments in a way that matched his company's values and would have a lasting impact. After purchasing the 150 acres in western Loudoun, Kuhn put it into a conservation easement.

The farm produced a record amount of produce and protein — 147,000 pounds — in 2020 for distribution to food banks in the Washington, D.C. area. The output was 11,000 more pounds than the farm had budgeted for at the start of 2020 and 30,000 more pounds than the farm produced in 2019.

For 2021, the farm’s goal is to produce 230,000 pounds of food for distribution to area food banks, which remain busy due to local residents struggling with making ends meet during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Understanding that bees are an integral part of the food chain, JK Community Farm realized that sustaining the bee population was extremely important.

At the farm's new bee hotel, staff and volunteers will be able to tell when bees are using the hotel when they create a mud door to cover the entrance. When a mud or leaf door is found, this means that a female bee has laid an egg inside. After the bee hatches, it will eat a supply of pollen until it is ready to break through the mud and fly away.

Solitary bees nest in the spring and early summer, so JK Community Farm is waiting and hoping the bee hotel is filled with guests in the coming months.

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