Supporting honey bees at Canada’s Wonderland, one hive at a time!
Grace Peacock
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It’s National Honey Bee Day and the perfect time to share the news that Canada’s Wonderland is now the proud owner of an urban honey beehive! These insects are important pollinators for flowers, fruits and vegetables but they’re at risk due to various threats including loss of habitat, climate change and the use of chemical pesticides.
We’ve partnered with urban beekeeping company Alvéole and earlier this summer installed a beehive with 30,000 honey bees on our property!
Now, while that sounds like a lot of bees, we feel it’s important to address some misconceptions::
- Honey bees are not interested in humans or their food. They will not be buzzing around your funnel cake or Icee at the park (those are wasps). Honey bees are only concerned with bringing nectar, pollen, resin and water back to the colony to ensure its development.
- Our honey bees are Italian honey bees, which have a very mild temperament. Because of this, they’re perfect neighbours in densely populated urban areas (and amusement parks!). It’s also why urban beekeepers wear little or no protection when tending to the hive.
For guests interested in learning more about the Canada’s Wonderland hive, you can follow along with updates from our beekeeper Daniel online at our MyHive page. There are interesting stats, like how far our bees travel in one day (upwards of 52,000 km!), photos of the Queen Bee herself and a timelapse video of the hive installation.
Honey bees are fascinating little creatures, check out some of these cool facts:
- There is only one queen per hive. In ideal conditions, Her Majesty can live for up to five years. She requires a court of bees to help feed, hydrate and clean her, as she is too busy laying up to 2,000 eggs daily to do it herself.
- Worker bees may only live between 30 and 45 days, but they occupy a variety of different roles during that time: cleaning, nursing, building, fanning, guarding and foraging.
- Each hive produces honey that reflects the ecosystem surrounding it. A hive's honey encompasses flavours from each flower visited by the bees.
- Bees fly the equivalent of four times the earth's circumference and visit up to 4.5M flowers to produce one kilogram of honey.
In addition to supporting a sustainable ecosystem and healthy honey bee colonies, we’ll also get some amazing honey from these hard workers!
Next time you see a honey bee in one of our many garden beds, you may very well be looking at an official Canada’s Wonderland honey bee!
(Honey bee stats provided by Alvéole)