Honey production at solar farms climbs 412% after Iowa State researchers add flowering plants for the bees

Honey production at solar farms rises after Iowa State adds flowering plants

Honey production at solar farms is rising in Iowa, where researchers changed what grows under and around the panels instead of leaving it as mowed grass. At a solar farm Alliant Energy operates for Iowa State University near Ames, a team led by Matthew ONeal, a professor of entomology, the scientific study of insects, planted native, perennial flowering plants to feed an onsite beekeeping operation, part of a practice known as agrivoltaics, pairing solar equipment with farming or wildlife habitat on the same land. Honey production for a collection of honeybee colonies at that site then rose 412%, according to a Civil Engineering Source article covering the research, with no reported effect on the electricity the solar farm generates or the crops planted on the same ground.

Matthew ONeal points to a national problem behind the finding. Beekeepers across the United States have watched hive survival fall from one year to the next, and honeybees have grown less productive over time.

And over the past 30 years, honeybees are less productive.

Matthew ONeal, professor of entomology at Iowa State University. Source 1.

He argues a public, utility owned solar farm is one of the few pieces of land researchers can actually change to test a fix at that scale, at a moment when many Iowans worry that expanding solar farms means losing farmland to fenced off, mowed ground.

Flowering plants at the site multiply tenfold between 2024 and 2025

Iowa State University Extension and Outreach reports, in an account of its own webinar published on its Iowa Learning Farms blog, that flowering plants at the same site increased tenfold between 2024 and 2025. That same account separately states that graduate researchers tracking the bees found substantial improvements in honey yield for each colony in 2025, a second, independent sign that the change worked, described with a year attached but no percentage of its own, not a figure to merge with the 412% rise above.

A federally funded research farm answers Iowa fears about losing land to solar

The solar farm itself spans 10 acres near Ames, according to Iowa Learning Farms, an Iowa State University Extension and Outreach program. Alliant Energy, which owns and operates the site, says it has 1.375 megawatts of capacity across 3,300 panels, developed by Waldinger and operating since 2023. The research project studying its beekeeping and crop results is separately funded by the United States Department of Energy, according to Iowa State University research project pages, a grant that Iowa Learning Farms says began in 2024. Neither source states a dollar amount for that grant. Researchers are also growing summer squash, peppers and broccoli beside the onsite apiary, the housing built for the honeybee colonies, according to Iowa State University research project pages, while Iowa State University Extension and Outreach runs public tours and field days at the site.

For a state where residents worry that expanding solar farms means losing farmland to bare, mowed ground, a Department of Energy funded project on land Iowa State University and Alliant Energy already share shows that changing the vegetation under the panels can raise honey production without cutting into the electricity or the crops the same land produces.