East Village bee hive brings a buzz to budding neighbourhood

Each hive is expected to make between 20 to 60 pounds of honey every year. May 30, 2019. (Courtesy Canadian Municipal Land Corporation)

To bee, or not to bee. For Calgary’s East Village, it wasn’t a difficult question.

Five honey bee hives are now buzzing along Riverfront Avenue Southeast thanks to a partnership between the Calgary Municipal Land Corporation (CMLC) and MOB Honey, a Calgary-based beekeeping company.

"Bees are good for cities and cities are good for bees," said Clare LePan with the CMLC. She said the bees will pollinate flowers and plants in the community.

The functioning apiary will be home to up to 200,000 bees by the end of the summer. Not only is the effort meant to promote the importance of bees, it also aims to introduce people to urban beekeeping.

“We’re also going to be offering some workshops every month so that residents can learn about beekeeping, interact with the hives and see how it all works,” LePan said.

The five hives are enclosed in a honeycomb-inspired structure behind eight-foot-tall walls. Each colony has about 10,000 bees right now, but the population rises rapidly.

Amber Yano is the owner of MOB Honey and the onsite beekeeper. She’ll be leading the tours and workshops the first Sunday of every month.

“The reason why we wanted [the hives] in such a public area was to engage with the community and tear down barriers,” Yano said, pointing out it may help people get over a fear of bees. She thinks the more people get to know the pollinators, the more they’ll understand the benefits.

“Bees are kind of the ‘gateway bug’ to nature,” she said.

Each hive is expected to make between 20-60 pounds of honey every year and it’ll all be sold at the East Village Experience Centre.

(Courtesy Canadian Municipal Land Corporation)