Hamilton Harbour, best known to farmers for its grain elevators and soybean processing plant, will soon be home to bee hives.
The Hamilton Port Authority is working with Humble Bee, a Hamilton-based urban beekeeping company, to install a bee yard on the city’s waterfront.
Twelve boxes will be installed on the land, each of them separated into three miniature hives that will each carry about 500 bees.
The project’s goal is to provide food and shelter for pollinator bees in the area, which will in turn provide a breeding ground for local honeybees.
“The port lands … offer ideal conditions for honeybee breeding, and the establishment of new ‘queendoms’, as we’ve been calling them,” said Sharon Clark, the Hamilton Port Authority’s Community Relations Manager,
Because the area is isolated from other hives, beekeepers will be better able to track and control the genetics of both the queen bees and their mating drones.
