The Kingbridge Centre is more than a conferencing centre – they have an Innovation Hub that works on high impact projects to showcase environmentally sustainable solutions. As part of their work, they welcomed 80,000 honey bees in May of this year, which had unrestricted access to the 113 acres for foraging from flowering plants and trees. Over the summer, the number of bees increased to more than 150,000, a wonderful indication of how happy they were in their new home.
The honey harvest from the beehives took place last week, coinciding with the Kingbridge Centre hosting 28 students and faculty from the McMaster Executive MBA program for 10 days, and the Compass team leading the food services for the conference. The two organizations collaborated on designing an immersive learning experience for the Executive MBA participants, with the opportunity for guests to participate in removing the frames, uncapping the honey, spinning and straining it, and putting it into jars. The Compass team created a unique cocktail using the freshly-harvested honey, and passed delicious honey-themed appetizers. While the conference guests sipped the refreshing drink and raved about the appetizers, the Master beekeepers answered their questions about the bees and the role they play in securing our food supply.
Honey bees are prolific pollinators and are responsible for pollinating 3/4 of the plants that produce 90% of our food. However, they have been dying at high rates since early 2000, due to pesticides, drought, habitat destruction, air pollution and climate change. The Innovation Hub is working with academic partners to develop and test new solutions to mitigate the impacts of these changes, and to protect these fuzzy, busy bees so integral to our food supply chains.
The honey harvest generated 250 lbs of premium, raw, organic honey, about 2/3 of the total honey created by the bees. The remaining third of the honey was left to support the bees over the coming winter. The Kingbridge team is already planning on increasing the number of hives and expanding the pollinator gardens, in addition to other agri-food innovation projects. High tech vertical farms, at-scale food forests, growing diverse fungi and innovative ways of composting of food waste are all areas that Kingbridge is actively exploring. With so many exciting projects underway, there will be lots of collaboration opportunities with Compass in the future.
