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Bee-keeping course promotes skills and awareness of urban ecosystem

Bees in the city? Don’t sound the alarms –– just yet. Calgary beekeeper Eliese Watson said often people leap to conclusions when the topic of keeping bees in an urban setting comes up.
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Eliese Watson leads a class in the art of bee keeping at Purearth Organics in Red Deer over the weekend.

Bees in the city? Don’t sound the alarms –– just yet.

Calgary beekeeper Eliese Watson said often people leap to conclusions when the topic of keeping bees in an urban setting comes up.

“People seem to jump into policy before they actually start jumping into educating the general public,” said Watson.

The beekeeper brought her Level 1 beekeeping project to Red Deer throughout the weekend.

Watson said it is not a question of whether or not people should be allowed to keep bees in urban settings.

The 25-year-old is the founder of Apiaries and Bees for Communities, a Calgary-based organization that offers educational programming on honeybees and native bees. Watson wants the general public to take bees seriously.

This means learning about their life cycles and their importance to the ecosystem before asking questions about legal liabilities.

“What’s important is that people have an awareness and understanding about their involvement in being part of an urban ecosystem,” she said.

Twelve people participated in the two-day workshop at Purearth Organics. Watson said the program is for people who want to learn skills that will take them back to the land and to nature. At the end of the course, the participants will have the knowledge and skills to keep bees.

Watson became interested in beekeeping about three years ago. She is from Crossfield, Alta. and had always wanted to move back to the farm.

Beekeeping allowed her to return to the land and nature in her urban setting. She has eight hives –– in Calgary and on an organic farm outside the city.

Watson has not taken any courses in beekeeping but she has mentored under beekeepers in Colorado, New York, Arizona and British Columbia.

“People are really screaming out for need of community or collaboration or sense of belonging,” said Watson. “Bees offer you an opportunity to feel like you a member of a community, the beekeeping community so to speak. It also offers you the chance to engage back to nature, to learn about the inter-connectiveness of things and to be humbled by nature.”

Course participant Brenda Cupples was concerned about the health of bees because of the spraying of pesticides in fields near her home on Burnt Lake Trail.

Cupples is considering keeping a hive and wanted to find out whether the spray ends up in the honey.

“The health of bees are in jeopardy and I would like to start my own colony to help them make honey naturally,” she said. Heirloom gardener, Melissa Eddy, lives in Red Deer County and wanted to learn more about bees and incorporate them into her farm.

Eddy said she was surprised to learn about how smart and community oriented bees are.

“Bees are collaborative, interdependent community oriented insects,” said Watson. “They are super organisms. They make decisions by consensus at all times.”

An investment of roughly $150 per colony and another $350 for equipment and hives will get you started in the beekeeping business.

For more beekeeping information or upcoming Red Deer courses or presentations, visit www.backyardbees.ca

crhyno@www.reddeeradvocate.com