Vancouver West End rooftop home to hives to help local bee population

May 20 is World Bee Day, which raises awareness of the importance of bees and the threats they face. Monika Gul reports on a new partnership meant to boost the sustainability of the local honeybee population – which is in decline.

It’s one of the last places you’d expect to find bee hives: The rooftop of an apartment building in Vancouver’s West End. But thanks to a new partnership for residential buildings in the city, it’s helping the local bee population.

“Basically we’re trying to be very respectful for the bees. We’re trying to emulate what they would do in nature and treat them with respect,” explained Iain Glass, executive director of Ensure Hive Future.

“These bees are a little bit different, in the sense that we’re locally rearing queens. These are queens that take care of things themselves, rather than the unfortunate chemical dependency that is the norm for bees in North America,” he explained.

Hollyburn Properties provides the rooftops, while Ensure Hive Future provides the bees and beekeeping. The program hopes to boost the sustainability of the local honey bee population, which is in an decline.

“Overall, honeybees, have been we’ve been losing maybe 20 to 30 per cent each year,” said Leonard Foster, a biochemistry and molecular biology professor with UBC.

“Then beekeepers have to make those numbers up each summer, in order to make a living and do the pollination that they’re needed for.”

Habitat loss due to agriculture and urbanization is among the reasons for the decline. It’s not yet clear what impacts the November floods in B.C. and cooler spring will have.

May 20 is World Bee Day, designated by the UN to raise awareness about the threats they face.

“Bees of all types play an important role in all ecosystems,” Foster said. “The more we can do to support bee health of all kinds — not just honeybees — the better off our environment is going to be, the healthier our crops, gardens, forests and wild places will be.”

Seventy-five per cent of the world’s food crops depend on pollinators, as does 35 per cent of global agricultural land. Foster says efforts like the one in the West End can help.

The program will also benefit residents who will plant bee-friendly plants and get a chance to taste some of the honey.

“Bee hives in Greater Vancouver produce two and a half times more honey per colony than the ones out in the Fraser Valley. So, with the irrigated gardens, we do extremely well on people’s plants on the balconies,” Glass added.

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