The City of Airdrie is trying to become Canada's healthiest city for people.  With the additions to the Airdrie Urban Agriculture Pilot Project Scope of Work that was approved at the last city council meeting, we also may become known as one of the healthiest cities in the country for bees and other pollinators.  

City council voted to approve two urban beekeeping pilot projects in Airdrie, and, as Senior Planner Gail Gibeau explains, one of them will start this year with the other one set to begin in 2019. 

"In 2018 we'll be doing an urban beekeeping pilot project on city-owned land.  We have selected a site which is 15 East Lake Hill and we'll be having a local beekeeper locate one of his existing hives onto that site where we'll build a public education campaign around the bees as an information piece to let the residents know that this can be done and eventually do our part in terms of helping to protect our pollinator habitat."

The hive will be placed on the property starting in June and stay there until the end of September.  During that time Gibeau says they'll be having a number of "show me" seminars, where the beekeeper will look after the hive and the activities, will be recorded and put up on the city's social media pages to serve as an education piece.

A report will then be presented to the council to let them know how the pilot project went and if there were any challenges.  A recommendation will then be made on whether to continue the project and if it should be extended to other city-owned properties.

The second pilot project is one that allows for one or two honeybee hives on residential properties starting in 2019.  Gibeau says they'll be providing council with some recommended guidelines for implementing that project in October of this year.  She says the city is looking at April of next year to about November of the following year for the residential pilot project. 

"In terms of participant selection, that will likely be happening about January of next year but we'll be doing a full public awareness and education campaign leading up to that process."

The third part of the bee project is council giving their support for administration to begin the process for Airdrie to obtain a Bee City Canda designation.  That would mean that Airdrie would be recognized as being a city that protects the habitat of bees, butterflies and other pollinators to support a healthy population.  Right now, Chestermere is the only city in Alberta with a Bee City Canada designation.

Gibeau says the city decided to move ahead with these projects because of the strong support they received from residents through an online survey conducted earlier this year.  

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