VICTORIA – More bees are coming to Victoria.
Canadian urban beekeeping company Alveole is putting approximately 50,000 new bees per hive into 12 new North American cities, four of which are in Canada including Victoria, as well as 5 in Europe.
Founded in 2013, Alveole, a social enterprise focused on environmental education, currently manages nearly 3,400 beehives, mostly installed on roofs or grounds of almost 600 companies, schools and organizations within North America and Europe.
The arrival of the hives has been eagerly awaited by companies wanting to join the movement towards the development of greater biodiversity in urban areas through installing beehives on their roofs or grounds. North America has lost over 50 per cent of its honey bee colonies over the past decade.
Alveole President and Co-Founder Alex McLean states “Bees pollinate up to 70 per cent of our food crops. Beyond promoting urban biodiversity, beekeeping serves primarily to create awareness in urban populations, connecting people to the role pollinators play in our ecosystem and the health of the nature that surrounds us.”
This past August, real estate giant Goldman Sachs Asset Management inaugurated its first 30 sites or apiaries on the roofs of buildings they manage in the U.S. The company sees this as a concrete gesture to protect and preserve a threatened species like honey bees and represents an important step forward in scaling up environmental conservation.
