What's the buzz on the UTM beehives?
The campus may be quiet, but one rooftop at U of T Mississauga is a hive of activity this spring.
As an essential worker in the agricultural sector, beekeeper Don Forster has been busy opening the 250 beehives he tends across the greater Toronto area. He recently visited the campus to check on the five hives located atop UTM’s Instructional Centre.
Despite unseasonably cool spring weather, Forster was delighted to find the majority of the UTM hives have survived and thrived over the winter. Under the insulated winter wraps, Forster found four of the hives humming with about 25,000 bees apiece, and plenty of new eggs produced by the resident queens. A fifth hive appears to have suffered a major loss of bees for reasons yet to be determined. “A mite or parasite could have gotten in there in the fall,” says Forster, who will return in the coming weeks to investigate further and recolonize the ailing hive.
In 2017, UTM’s Hospitality & Retail Services operations established 15,000 Buckfast bees—known for their mild temperament—in three hives on a third-floor green roof space. Since then, two more hives have been added to house a population that has grown to about 150,000 bees.
“For the bees, weather-wise, this spring has been terrible,” says Forster. “They haven’t had a lot of foraging days because it has been too wet or too cold." Fortunately, each hive was well stocked with honey to nourish the bees over the winter months.
As the weather has finally warmed up, UTM’s bees have begun to forage amongst the earliest spring blooms, including dandelions, native plants and blossoms from serviceberry and fruit trees around the campus. “They are two or three weeks behind what I normally see, but they are starting to perk up,” Forster says.
Forster has been working with bees since his childhood on a farm in the Laurentian mountains. He now shares his expertise as a college instructor and has led workshops at UTM. His spring hive maintenance includes unwrapping the hive boxes, clearing away debris and inspecting the hives for signs of disease. In early June, he will split the larger hives into new colonies to give the bees more space and prevent swarming, which is when part of a crowded colony “hives off’ and spontaneously leaves to establish a new colony in the wild.
According to retail services manager Suresh Krishnan, honey from the IB hives is harvested once or twice a year. Last year, the bees produced 462 kg of honey which was used in the UTM kitchens and sold through the hospitality and retail services department.
Krishnan notes that the hives are just one of many sustainability-focused food services initiatives at UTM. The hospitality and retail services team manages indoor farm walls that produce pesticide-free herbs and leafy greens for the campus kitchens year-round, and hosts regular outreach events such as free Community Kitchen workshops and Sustainability Week education programs. The team has also been building on a long-term commitment to fair trade food and beverage offerings. In 2019 UTM became the first campus in Canada to achieve Fair Trade Silver designation from Fair Trade Canada.
“The hives are a way for UTM to support pollinators and help stop the collapse of bee populations,” says Krishnan. “We are a small campus, but we can do so much to support sustainability.”
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