Return of the Hives: ComEd welcomes 80,000 Honeybees to Five Acres of Prairie

Beyoncé, the original queen bee, turned heads this summer when she released her latest album, but this story is about a different kind of queen bee!

ComEd’s honeybees returned for the third summer in a row – this time at new home in Prospect Heights, Ill. This year, ComEd is hosting 80,000 honeybees on a five-acre prairie located beneath ComEd transmission lines.  

ComEd celebrates the growth of this program on August 20, National Honeybee Day, an awareness day dedicated to the importance of honeybees, their contribution to sustainable development and the importance of protecting pollinators like them.

“Pollinators like bees and butterflies are the heroes of our ecosystem that help keep food on our tables. Unfortunately, their access to food and safe habitats is in danger,” Neena Hemmady, vice president of support services at ComEd. “It is our responsibility to conserve wildlife and pollinator habitats, which is why we are excited to welcome back our honeybees. This summer, they will be busy bees, enjoying acres of native plants and pollinating the prairie under our power lines while creating their own honey.”

Helping to support the installation of this year’s bee hives is Alveole, a global beekeeping company that collaborates with businesses to further their sustainability efforts. ComEd has partnered with Alveole for the past three years to install and maintain the beehives, harvesting 94 pounds of honey for local communities along the way.

“The Prairie in Prospect Heights is a beautiful site, and I can see the bees doing very well for the long term due to the ample sunshine and native plants,” said Grace Hart, Alveole Urban Beekeeper. “The two queen bees will reign the prairie and are expected to lay up to 2,000 eggs per day. These two colonies are a part of an estimated 5,800,000 Alveole’ honeybees pollinating around Chicago.”

In addition to supporting vegetation growth, the honeybee hives benefit the community by producing honey. In 2021, the ComEd bees made 34.2 pounds of honey, making up 120 jars of honey that ComEd donated to the Self-Help Closet & Pantry of Des Plaines. This year’s harvest will help support food pantries serving the Prospect Heights community.

While the hives are a big draw every year due to the novelty of ComEd sponsored beehives – they are part of a program with a much bigger impact. ComEd has a 30-year history of working to expand wildlife habitats that protect pollinators and their local ecosystems. As of 2022, ComEd’s pollinator conservation efforts reached new heights, with three million milkweed seeds distributed throughout the region to feed monarch butterflies and nearly 4,000 acres of powerline corridor land now deemed pollinator habitats.

Protecting pollinators is urgent as bees, butterflies, birds and more than 200,000 other pollinator species are responsible for one out of every three bites of food humans eat and $20 billion worth of products annually in the United States. Today, pollinators face a growing threat of habitat loss as native vegetation is replaced by roadways, monoculture, and non-native plants, and their well-being is further threatened by humans’ overuse of pesticides and by climate change. 

ComEd’s commitment to protecting green spaces and other natural habitats in our region is reinforced through the company’s annual Green Region grant program. Now in its tenth year, the 2022 Green Region grant is providing $200,000 in funding to 23 communities and organizations throughout northern Illinois to mitigate the impact of climate change and support our local pollinators.

This National Honeybee Day, celebrate these incredible worker bees and explore ways you can help them thrive!