An English professor turned bee specialist is hoping to reinvent the way surface mines are reclaimed to include a little more honey. Tammy Horn, a Kentucky native and senior researcher at Eastern Kentucky University, envisions the future of Central Appalachia as the "honey corridor." Her plan starts with reforesting the more than 33,000 surface-mined acres in Eastern Kentucky and neighboring West Virginia in a way that supports bee pollination, Karin Fischer of The Chronicle of Higher Education reports.
One day, Horn hopes for 25,000 bee hives on former strip mines, but for now her project, Coal Country Beeworks, has 53 hives on five sites. One of the first mining companies to agree to Horn's plan was the International Coal Group, which followed her plan to include trees, shrubs and flowers that pollinators prefer in the reclamation plan for one of its surface mines. The signature tree for Appalachian apiarists is the sourwood, which has been rarely seeded on reclaimed land, Fischer reports.
"People wouldn't drive five miles to see a reclaimed surface-mine site, but they come 1,000 miles to see a bee yard," Don Gibson, ICG's director of permitting and regulatory affairs, told Fischer. Already more than 250 people have visited the three ICG sites that house the bee project. The company uses these visits as an opportunity to talk about modern-day mining and reclamation methods. "If this region can see the economic promise going forward," Gibson added, "it will be a benefit for everyone involved." (Read more)
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