Buzzing with Biodiversity: Bee City USA & Bee Campus USA 2024 Annual Report

Juniata College, PA: In the spring of 2024, Juniata College hosted its second annual Graduation Forest tree planting event, which was the result of efforts by our Bee Campus committee, Habitat Restoration club, Student Government, and various other faculty and students. The goal of this annual event is to re-establish native habitat while simultaneously encouraging stewardship in the newly-graduated class, inviting them year after year and seeing how their forest has grown. Over the course of three events and two different sites, students and faculty gathered to plant a total of 275 native trees.

Portland Community College, OR: We had a great year of activities and events with twelve different events and almost all of them being committee-hosted.

Throughout the year, our committee hosted a variety of pollinator-specific events in partnership with the on-campus Learning Gardens. Some of our favorites were installing a new pollinator garden at the Cascade Campus and a gardeners party at Rock Creek Campus. In May, PCC students and committee members co-hosted a work party to plant a new pollinator-specific garden within the Cascade Campus Learning Garden. This event was well attended and the supplies were all grant funded by students. The gardeners party in October was such a hit, bringing in about 40 students, staff and faculty. Committee members and volunteers led attendees through a variety of hands-on garden activities, including a build your own mason bee home activity. People loved that so much, that we continued to host that activity at smaller tabling fair events. 

Our continued on-campus partnership with Washington County Master Gardener Association (WCMGA), has been very fruitful. The representative on our committee helped to host numerous events at our Rock Creek Campus with over 250 attendees throughout the year. In June, they hosted an event entitled “WCMGA Open Garden: Invertebrates AND Vertebrates.” This event was open to the community with hands-on bee-related activities for the whole family. Held in the Rock Creek garden, volunteers managed different booths with educational and fun activities about pollinators.

Syracuse University, NY: Each week during the months of June, July, August, September, and October, we hosted open volunteer hours in our campus gardens. These sessions provided students with opportunities to earn service learning hours while supporting our sustainability efforts. Throughout the summer, several dedicated students volunteered regularly, contributing to garden maintenance and pollinator habitat care. Participation increased significantly toward the end of August and continued strong through September and October, as more students returned to campus and engaged in hands-on environmental stewardship.

This event was hosted by our committee: We held a Seeds and Weeds event and invited the campus community to help gather native seeds from the pollinator garden while removing non-native plants to support the garden’s health. The collected seeds have been distributed to our other pollinator garden, and the extra seeds will be distributed at future events throughout 2025/2026.

Triton College, IL: In 2024, Triton College completed 3 pollinator habitat creation projects. Each of these projects were bioswales installed across campus.

The first bioswale project, completed in the spring of 2024, came from repaving parking lot 3. During this repaving project, 10 mini bioswales were added to the parking lot to improve drainage and add pollinator habitat. Each of these little “bioswale islands” contains several native plants, rocks, and a native tree.

The second project was also a repaving project that involved 8 new mini bioswales being added to student parking lot 11.

The third bioswale project replaced a portion of the concrete walkway through the heart of campus with a long-stretching bioswale containing many pollinator friendly native plants. For our campus, adding more bioswales was not only cost-effective but an easy to implement solution to add more pollinator friendly spaces to the campus. I would encourage other campuses to look into spaces that can become bioswales or pollinator friendly planting sites, as many college grounds often remain short grass with little ecological value.

University of California Davis, CA: A new NSF grant funded garden was installed in 2025. The Climate Adaptation Living Lab (CALL Garden) is available to researchers studying the impact of climate change on insects. For the next three years, the focus is on how different irrigation treatments impact insect herbivory and nectar production for pollinators.

The Student Farm continued creating and maintaining agricultural fields and demonstration gardens to highlight best practices that support pollinator habitat.

The UC Davis Bee Haven continued to maintain and enhance the .6 acre bee garden.

At the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science, the Good Life Garden was planted with pollinator plants to enhance food production.

In the Arboretum and Public Garden, volunteers, students and staff created or enhanced pollinator habitat throughout campus. In the Arboretum collections, we maintained and enhanced valued habitat gardens. Our Urban Tree Stewardship Team continued to plant their Texas Tree Trial Research plots to plan for a climate ready tree canopy. Tree selection includes keystone oak species and several flowering trees that support pollinators.

In the Putah Creek Riparian Reserve, Learning by Leading™ teams created and enhanced habitat restoration projects and planted hedgerows that support pollinators.

The Davis Rewilding Society maintained native plant habitat on main campus.

The “Back 40” section of the UC Davis campus is maintained as a California native planting project that continues to be enhanced with native plants and proper maintenance.

University of Rochester, NY: Our Horticulture and Grounds team has actively identified candidates for and designated several no-mow zones on campus called ‘messy meadows’. These spaces are left to overgrow with native vegetation, providing shelter for many insects and animals. Across all areas of the campus, the Horticulture and Grounds team aims to perform lawn care once every 2 or 3 years to avoid disturbing the insects that inhabit the college grounds.

Utah State University, UT: Our campus had several outdated beds with water hungry non-flowering plants. We changed these beds to water-wise native pollinator plants that we produced pesticide free in our greenhouses.

College of Southern Maryland, MD: Our college took several steps to reduce chemical use and promote more sustainable land management on campus. The college began using an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) approach for groundskeeping, based fertilization on soil testing, and stopped using pesticides in child care areas. Regular spraying around buildings was replaced with targeted baiting and spot treatments only when needed.

Turf care practices also changed. The college improved fields by aerating, overseeding, and using organic materials instead of chemical fertilizers. Low-maintenance grasses were planted on new soccer fields, and wildflowers were added in new low- and no-mow zones. A net-zero tree removal policy was adopted, meaning every tree removed due to disease or safety concerns was replaced, and Ash trees were treated to avoid losing them to disease. The college also planted fruit trees and completed a tree inventory to better track and care for campus trees.

To manage water and runoff, CSM installed pervious walkways and parking lots and planted buffer areas near waterways. Moisture sensors were installed to better control irrigation on soccer fields. Equipment upgrades, like a snow-brushing mower, also helped cut down on the need for salt and chemicals during winter.

Finally, the college started composting organic waste from grounds work and food services, and created a Facilities Department Sustainability Committee to involve staff, students, and community members in planning future sustainability efforts.

University of California Santa Barbara, CA: The campus-based Landscaping Committee and the Facilities and Management team uphold organic methods of maintaining the gardens/greenery/flora/vegetation across the campus. Hand weeding is a particularly common method used to care for our school’s gardens. Dead plants are reused as nesting habitats. Herbicides and pesticides are only employed as a last resort to control invasive grasses. In general, to practice pollinator-friendly pest management actions the campus utilizes mulch to promote soil health, weed-free soil amendments, regularly trims vegetation to prevent nesting of pests, and removes invasive plants that typically provide for pests. The Bee Campus Committee-initiated gardens are 100% organic and hand-weeded. At the Green House Garden Project, a community garden we are currently focused on to enhance pollinator habitat at, is a 100% organic garden in which no pesticides can be used at.

The Cheadle Center has multiple native/endangered plant/species support programs. Currently, Bee Campus and Cheadle Center are collaborating to establish a habitat augmentation plan for the rare and endangered Bombus crotchii which have historically been observed on UCSB Campus open spaces (North Campus Open Space and Coal Oil Point Reserve). This restoration plan will eliminate insecticides and limit the use of herbicides on UCSB-managed land. Additionally, an effort will be made to publicize the negative effects of pesticides on insects to the public, with special emphasis on sharing this information with the houses adjacent to UCSB open spaces which will be the target for Bombus crotchii restoration.

University of Idaho, ID: In tandem with hands-on changes, the University of Idaho also pursued policy-level initiatives in 2024 aimed at safeguarding pollinators, people, and waterways from pesticide risks. The cornerstone of these efforts is the newly established Integrated Pest & Pollinator Management (IPPM) Plan which effectively serves as a campus policy directing how pest control is handled with environmental and human health in mind. This plan mandates a preventative, least-toxic approach to pest management, ensuring pesticides are used sparingly and only as a last resort after non-chemical methods have been considered. By explicitly integrating pollinator protection into the pest management strategy, U of I is reducing the likelihood of harmful chemical exposure to bees and other beneficial insects.

Furthermore, the IPPM plan requires that any staff applying pesticides on campus be properly trained and hold a professional applicator license a step that not only promotes safer, more knowledgeable pesticide use but also protects personnel and the campus community. To complement this, the Bee Campus committee introduced a modern tracking system for all pest control activities via an online GIS database. This transparency and record-keeping initiative functions as a de facto accountability policy: it ensures every pest treatment decision is documented and reviewed for compliance with IPPM guidelines. Collectively, these initiatives — from formalizing IPM practices in a written plan to enforcing training requirements and thorough documentation —  are strengthening how the university manages pests in ways that better protect pollinators, the campus community, and local waterways from pesticide impacts.

We believe that our Integrated Pest & Pollinator Management (IPPM) approach, particularly our GIS-based pest management applications, could serve as a valuable model for other Bee Campus affiliates. By leveraging technology to track pest sightings, assess IPM strategies, and document treatments, we have created a system that enhances transparency, accountability, and pollinator-conscious decision-making. While we recognize the potential for other universities to benefit from this system, we currently do not have the capacity to provide training or mentorship on setting up similar tools. Our focus through 2025 will be on refining our internal processes and ensuring the long-term success of our implementation. We anticipate being better positioned to offer guidance to other affiliates starting in 2026, once our system has been fully optimized and integrated into our campus landscape management practices.

University of Wisconsin – Madison, WI:

Grounds: The Grounds team in collaboration with the Green Fund has made progress towards a Re:wild Your Campus certification through an Organic Land Management Pilot Project. This project aims to keep the lawn spaces we love for recreation and find alternatives to the use of synthetic chemicals to promote a healthy environment. UW staff and faculty are using organic alternatives such as compost and corn gluten meal in combination with mechanical processes such as soil aeration to maintain the turfgrass without synthetic inputs. The project consists of four highly visible campus locations (Henry Mall, Library Mall, the Divine Nine Plaza, and Ogg Residence Hall). These locations will be used to inform changes to land management practices and policies in the future.

Arboretum: The Arboretum consists of over 1,000 acres in Madison, including remnant and restored prairies, savannas, woodlands, wetlands, a native plant garden, and a woody plant collection. Over the last 6 years, the Arboretum’s primary goal for managing prairie and oak savanna units has been to maintain and where possible enhance natural biodiversity. Efforts have largely been focused on managing invasive and over-abundant species through a wide variety of methods including mowing, girdling, cutting, hand-pulling, and judicious pesticide use. Pesticide use across the Arboretum consists of spot treatment, with broadcast limited to areas with single species composition when needed. Spot treatment targeting is highly selective and focused on individual species or suites of species. A section of the Arboretum, the Native Plant Garden, only rarely uses herbicides and never uses insecticides or fungicides. All plants in the Native Plant Garden are neonicotinoid-free, sourced from native plant nurseries. Within the Arboretum’s Longenecker Horticultural Gardens, Finalsan, an herbicidal soap, has been used since 2021 and has reduced glyphosate use within the area by 25%. Within subsections of the Longenecker Garden glyphosate use has been reduced by 90%. The land managers carry a battery-powered string trimmer with them as they go about their day. This allows them to use mechanical control to set back or kill herbaceous weeds without the use of any herbicide. Because the trimmer is battery-powered, it does not require the priming or idling of fossil-fuel-powered trimmers, so makes for an easier workflow, letting staff catch weeds when they are younger and easier to control. With the support of the Green Fund, the Arboretum replaced a fossil fuel-powered riding lawn mower with an electric one. Staff now use electric mowers (ride on and push) for much of our turf grass mowing.

South Dakota State University, SD: The native plant sale, hosted by the SDSU Native Plant Initiative, was a hit again this year. All of the native plants are grown without the use of pesticides and are insect safe for local gardens. The plants are grown in small cone-tainers by students and faculty with proceeds from the sale ensuring cost recovery to keep the native plants coming to the community year-after-year. The group sold roughly 400 plants in the span of just a couple hours. This is an effective way of getting high quality native plants in the hands of community gardeners.

University of Connecticut, CT: All events listed below were hosted by groups and organizations that have representatives on our UConn Bee Campus Committee and/or participate in pollinator-related outreach and education within our UConn campus and local communities.   

1. Student farmers from Spring Valley Student Farm (SVSF) hosted 24 hours of UConn Community Garden Volunteer Days with an estimated 200 student volunteers during 2024. These events occurred on various Saturdays and Sundays during the semester from 12-3pm. Volunteers helped maintain and improve the permaculture garden through weeding, mulching, planting, and pruning perennial plants. The garden also served as a largely educational space, where students could learn about and implement sustainable permaculture practices.
2. SVSF hosts Farm Friday every Friday during the parts of the semester that fall within the warm growing season (March, April, September, October). Farm Friday is an opportunity for UConn students to gain a variety of valuable experiences within the SVSF grounds. Activities during Farm Friday include seed planting, crop harvesting, pollinator bed maintenance, or even the ability to work with more specialized projects such as aquaponics. SVSF works in collaboration with EcoHouse Learning Community to gather volunteers to give them the opportunity to learn about sustainable agriculture and gain skills they normally would not be able to in a classroom setting. In Spring 2024, we hosted 134 individual volunteers (some of whom visited several times to volunteer), for a total of 308 volunteer hours. In Fall 2024, we hosted 255 student volunteers for a total of 550 volunteer hours. This is a total of 858 volunteer hours.
3. The Edible Forest Garden (EFG) at Spring Valley Student Farm is a cultivated garden of perennial trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants providing food for humans and habitat and nectar for pollinators. This diverse system replicates a forest structure and sustains itself through the many ecological roles played by each individual species. Student farmers and volunteers maintain the EFG by removing invasive plants, installing new plants, and building and maintaining trails. Student farmers contributed about 200 hours of volunteer work to maintain the EFG this year.
4. Each year, Spring Valley Student Farm grows hundreds of annual flower seedlings to give away at UConn’s Earth Day Spring Fling. In 2024, they grew 458 marigold seedlings. Seedlings were distributed in paper pots made by the student farmers out of recycled newspaper, and participants were invited to pot up their own plant or request that we pot it up for them. SVSF also provided instructions for care and planting outside and invited participants to visit the farm.
5. Insect Wonders at the Farm is an annual event that is part of Bug Week at UConn. This year SVSF set up several activities: a presentation on honeybees and working with hives; a Jeopardy!-style game for children about pollinators and honeybees; a scavenger hunt for different types of bugs and beneficial insects that could be found on the farm, and bug-themed arts and crafts. Insect Wonders at the Farm is a family-oriented event and was attended by a handful of community members around CT (children and adults). There were 4 designated student farmer volunteers working stations, as well as several other student farmers completing farm tasks in the field but were also interacting with the families and helping them find bugs.

University of Maryland, MD: UMD Landscaping staff take a field trip to learn about native pollinators, wildflowers, and community efforts at the USGS Native Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab, Eastern Ecological Science Center, Patuxent Wildlife Research Refuge, Beltsville MD. UMD staff visited the work of pollinator conservation community partners, UMD Entomology Graduate students, local Bee City USA Affiliates, and native bee scientist, Sam Droege.

University of Puerto Rico at Utuado, PR: Members from the committee and student body visited 27 schools to talk about the importance of pollinator habitat and to help select areas where pollinator gardens will be developed in 2025. We also received students from diverse schools and levels in our campus to show them our model gardens and give workshops on invertebrate conservation. During the summer, 33 teachers participated in a hands-on workshop to learn how to include pollinator education in their science and math courses. During the 4-day university’s farm fair (Festival Tierra Adentro) we conducted informative tours through the habitat areas, gave workshops on habitat development and on pollinator services, distributed seeds, and answered questions from the public.

University of Tennessee at Martin, TN: Outreach included a Weed Wrangle on 4/9/2024 in which student volunteers removed invasive privet from our campus greenway to make room for native flowering species. KaBloom was an opportunity on 4/23/2024 for students to assist campus grounds for four hours in planting flowers in campus gardens. A Social Media announcement was posted on Facebook on 6/22/2024 inviting all to celebrate National Pollinator Week. All events were hosted by our Committee, which includes the Director of Campus Grounds, and the Coordinator of the Center For Sustainability.

Bellarmine University, KY: The continuing education course was a professional development workshop for teachers entitled the Environmental Stewardship Project. A third of the workshop was dedicated to conveying information about how to install a pollinator garden at their school. All of the teachers took home native plants and some supplies to get them started, including the Xerces Society’s Gardening for Butterflies book.

Clark College, WA:

• Biology majors (credit class):
  • • Lecture about the natural history of native bees.
    • Mason bee lab with retrieval of cocoons, investigations of possible causes of cocoon death, creation of bee nest boxes, hanging and monitoring nest boxes.
    • Presentation about native bee surveys using a Xerces based linear transect protocol. Subsequently, students do several bee surveys across several weeks both on campus and off.
• Biology 100 (credit class): Planning stages in 2024 for a unit in spring 2025. This will entail a mason bee lab similar to that offered to biology majors (above).
• Flowering Plants of the Pacific Northwest (credit): Pollinator and Bee Campus lecture.
• Bee Walk and Bee Lives (non-credit): Students were given an introduction to the natural history of bees and watched a bee documentary. Later, students went on a bee walk. Here we observed and captured (and later released) bees. Students saw foraging activity, pollen collection on bees, mason bee nests, parasitic bees and of course a variety of different bee species. We were joined on our bee walk with a member of Washington’s Bee Atlas team.
• The Natural History of Bees (non-credit): This class explored the natural history of bees and also their evolutionary development from ancestral wasps. This is a more science-heavy class that includes a fuller evolutionary explanation for bees’ habits and behaviors. At the end of this class, students went on a bee walk to observe behaviors they had learned about in lectures.

University of Iowa, IA:

• Prairie Restoration (for credit) – With this course, students actively participate in the ecological reconstruction of a prairie on the UI campus. Through basic fieldwork, students come to better appreciate the principles and techniques of prairie restoration
• Entomology Lab (for credit) – In this course, students gain hands-on experience in lab and field settings to learn about insect biology, diversity, ecology, morphology, physiology, and behavior. Students learn professional entomology techniques such as insect collection and preservation, DNA extraction and sequencing, and analysis of evolutionary and ecological data.
• Environmental Conservation (for credit) – Urban living has many benefits but also has implications for the health and well-being of urbanites as well as for the survival of species and integrity and functioning of urban ecosystems. Identifying ways to manage cities to sustainably support healthy human populations, biodiversity, and ecosystems requires us to understand how people experience, value, benefit from, are harmed by, and make decisions regarding urban nature.
• Wildlife & Habitat Conservation Law (for credit) – This interdisciplinary course introduces students to the law of species and habitat protection, focusing on animals and plants located in the Macbride Nature Recreation Area, managed by UI WILD. Students will learn how state and federal laws such as the Endangered Species Act, Migratory Bird Treaty Act, Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and Clean Water Act work in practice by learning from experts who apply these regulatory frameworks in the field.

University of California San Diego, CA: The Bee Campus Ambassador position is designed to cultivate student leadership and outreach skills through engagement with pollinator conservation education. Students in this role created and hosted social and educational events targeted at informing the campus community about the ecological importance of native pollinators and vegetation. Ambassadors were required to commit to the position for at least one academic year, during which they organized tabling events, coordinated awareness campaigns, and facilitated workshops or tours of pollinator gardens.

Participants were recruited through an interview process, and while the position is unpaid, it provides formal CCR recognition and supports the development of numerous competencies, including civic engagement, leadership, communication skills, and critical thinking. The structure emphasizes student initiative, with Ambassadors playing a front-facing role in expanding awareness of pollinator issues among peers and faculty alike.

University of South Carolina Upstate, SC: The Engage Green service-learning and community engagement program began with an instructor-focused boot camp that encouraged instructors across the general education curriculum and UNIV U101 sections to work towards a shared project in collaboration with the Spartanburg Area Conservancy. Removing invasive plant species on the greenway across from campus transformed how we integrate career competencies in the curriculum. The multi-year revitalization project of the Upper Chinquapin Greenway, located only a mile from campus, is managed by the Spartanburg Area Conservancy with over 100 acres of protected urban forest and nearly 2 miles of nature trails. Removing invasive species and promoting native plants for pollinators were key themes in this project. 16 sections, with 11 Instructors across 6 General Education courses and 4 UNIV U101.

University of North Florida, FL: Sixty members of the Biology and Wetland Club planted over 150 rare and endangered native orchids in the Sawmill Slough. This project aimed to increase pollinator diversity and was associated with courses in biology and environmental science, offering students valuable insights into conservation efforts.

University of Texas at Dallas, TX: Each spring, we maintain and expand a pollinator garden as part of our programming for our Sustainability Service Honors program. Graduates who earn a certain number of volunteering hours related to sustainability are honored in a ceremony when they graduate. As part of their campus legacy, they plant native pollinator plants in a garden outside our campus library, which was done in May 2024. In December, fall graduates were able to partake in reseeding one of our roadside wildflower areas near one of our apiaries. 

Experiential Learning Opportunities for students taking Woody Plants classes, field experience for Pollinators in Crisis students, IAA internship and horticulture internship courses are also service learning opportunities to assist with horticulture efforts in conservation landscaping on campus. There were many other service-learning examples that paired service and learning objectives including events leading College Park Scholars, honors fraternities, classes, as well as for-credit internships focused on conservation and biodiversity/ecology research work on campus and in local communities.

East Georgia State College, GA: Always seek out local groups for financial assistance and volunteers!

Farmingdale State College SUNY, NY: Applying for grants and/or plant donations (where possible) has been huge for us to continue trying to become a more bee-friendly campus!

St. Ambrose University, IA: It won’t all happen in one year, or even 3 years, and sometimes there are steps back, in addition to encourage steps forward.

University of Maryland, MD: Collaborative work such as updating our Campus IPM Plan has really helped us build a greater understanding of our campus community and how our management strategies impact or can help conservation efforts. We find that the more often we meet together the more collaborative our efforts can be.

University of New Mexico-Taos, NM: Perhaps the most rewarding lesson has been the sense of community that pollinator conservation has fostered. The Bee Campus designation has sparked excitement across campus and engaged students in hands-on learning, from the smallest of our students at Kids Campus, elementary, middle, and high school students from our community, to our college students. The designation has inspired local organizations and schools to explore partnerships with us and pollinator-friendly initiatives. The momentum generated this year demonstrates that pollinator conservation is not just about ecology—it is about building connections, education, and shared stewardship. As we move forward, these lessons will continue to shape our approach, ensuring that UNM-Taos remains a leader in sustainable pollinator conservation in our region.

University of North Texas, TX: Our primarily suggestion to people starting a new Bee Campus USA group or one looking to change their structure is to put as much focus as possible on the students. There is definitely a priority for staff to be on it, especially any sustainability staff and facilities management staff, but students help with the outreach side incredibly. We also have dedicated faculty members who teach about pollinator life both in and out of the classroom. Building this group at all three levels has been vital to our success and growth on campus.

University of Rochester, NY: It is important to have student committee members from all class years who are able to contribute to our activities. New student members should be included and educated on committee operations early to ensure seamless transitions when 4th year student members graduate.

University of Texas at Austin, TX: Our committee has discovered creative and engaging methods to educate our community about pollinators while encouraging broader involvement beyond our committee and into the UT public. These activities include events such as Jeopardy nights, tabling at elementary school science nights, arts and crafts sessions, and social garden workdays.