If you’re a golfer, you might want to keep an eye out for something new when you hit the fairways at one Calgary course this summer.
Two bee hives, housing between 50-100 thousand bees, have been installed at the City of Calgary-owned McCall Lake Golf Course in northeast Calgary.
“Good idea,” golfer Hugh Paul said. “Our fruit tree pollinators, you’ve got to have them, and we’re killing lots of these with insecticides and stuff like that, so I think it’s brilliant.”
The pilot project is a first for a city-owned golf course in Calgary, with people involved trying to make bees feel right at home
“Golf courses are a pocket of nature within the city, especially the McCall Lake Golf Course; there’s water available for the bees, which is great,” beekeeper Sean Higgins said. “They also let a lot of the dandelions and other weeds and plants grow around the area for the hives — (the bees) do really well there.”
Beekeepers will begin harvesting the honey in mid-August, and then later this year they’ll be winterizing the hives.
The plan is to host the bees at McCall Lake for three years, with the city also looking putting in hives at other golf courses and possibly in parks.
“You can make these little unused spaces around our city something really beautiful and something really thriving,” Higgins said.
Many golfers say they’re glad to be sharing the course with the bees.
“They have the right to be here just as much as we do,” Cindy Heister said. “And they’re a species that we’re trying to save right now.”
“They are great for the environment,” Shari Rider said. “We need them to make food and live, so we have to have bees.”
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