[Pollinator] City of Vancouver supplies free condos to boost urban bee population

[Matthew Shepherd (Xerces Society)]

An interesting project from Vancouver, BC, promoting bees in urban areas. Article from the Vancouver Sun.
http://www.vancouversun.com/Technology/City+Vancouver+supplies+free+condos+boost+urban+population/1475229/story.html
City of Vancouver supplies free condos to boost urban bee population
By Gerry Bellett, Vancouver SunApril 7, 2009


 
One of the 53 bee boxes placed in parks around Vancouver.
Photograph by: Ian Lindsay, Vancouver Sun
VANCOUVER — A $90,000 project to increase the bee population in Vancouver is underway with volunteers now monitoring 53 new colonies of mason bees, living in their own “bee condos” in various parks and public spaces around the city.
The program began last year with 100 mason-bee condos being distributed to homeowners for placing in backyards, said Hartley Rosen, manager of Environmental Youth Alliance, the volunteer organization that is responsible for the initiative.
Residents taking a colony of 36 bees were expected to plant pollen-rich, bee-friendly plants and fruit trees and to garden organically without the use of pesticides, Rosen said.
“They are expected to monitor the colony and see how the bees are doing and how many cavities in the condo are filled,” he said.
“It’s pesticides which are killing bees, so we want to encourage people to garden organically.”
Rosen said the urban apiary project was inspired by the news that bee populations across North America are in decline.
“We do a lot of hands-on work with youth and this was a project to create awareness about the need to encourage the growth of bee populations in urban areas,” he said.
Within the last month, 53 large condos, 50 of them capable of housing 72 bees each, and three super-sized hives which will be home to 720 bees each, have been placed in public areas around Vancouver.
The largest are a pagoda-shaped hive in Stanley Park near the Rose Garden, one resembling a Yaletown condo in Jericho Park and a pyramid-style structure in Everett Crowley Park.
That’s 8,000 bees spread across a whole city, but Rosen said the hope is that the bees will reproduce.
gbellett at vancouversun.com
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

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The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation
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Matthew Shepherd
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