North Shore library abuzz with new bee lending program
Participants can take home blue orchard mason bees in new program
A Metro Vancouver library is abuzz with an unconventional offering for users to check out — bees.
For the third spring in a row, the West Vancouver Memorial Library (WVML) is encouraging locals to step into the world of beekeeping with its annual bee-lending initiative. Participants borrow a Mason Bee Bungalow — a starter home with 10 to 15 live, dormant mason bee cocoons — take it home, and establish their own bee colony.
The bees are "really easy and fun to raise," and perfect for anyone with a garden, small backyard, or low-rise apartment patio who wants to support the local ecosystem, said Taren Urquhart, WVML's arts and special events programmer.
"Together, we go on a one-year journey," she said.
"You take it home, I tell you where to put it up. I send you newsletters throughout the year. I ask you to observe it, and then I invite everyone back in January and February to a cocoon-washing party."
The returned and washed cocoons are prepared for the next year of registrants, and the students become part of Urquhart's mason bee alumni, who can call on Urquhart for beekeeping advice or guidance.
The bee whisperer
Urquhart has worked with the insects for close to 30 years.
Before joining the library in 2016, Urquhart ran a small business making homes for mason bees and running pollination programs in schools. Shortly after joining the library, she worked with the youth department to install a "bee hotel" on its rooftop garden, a place that would be a sanctuary for the insects and a place for education.
The program started during the pandemic three years ago. She piloted the project with library staff before debuting the official bee lending program, along with an educational online workshop, in 2022.
The workshop is a non-negotiable phase of the program, said Urquhart, equally as important for educating potential bee parents as it is for weeding out those who may not be truly committed.
What is a mason bee?
She said she doesn't expect beginner beekeepers to be as clued up as herself, but they must understand one key piece of information: the bees they will take home are not your traditional, yellow-and-black striped, Winnie the Pooh-esque honeybees, Urquhart said.
The fostered bees are blue orchard masons — native to B.C., small, dark blue in colour, and incapable of stinging.
"If that's all I can get across with this then I know I've done well, because those are huge walls of understanding we need to get through. There are just as important bees out there than the ones that make honey," she said.
"I am not interested in just giving these away willy-nilly if they're not going to be looked after, because it's not fair to the bees. We as humans are so bad at getting our hooks into nature, and manipulating it and not necessarily doing what's best for the creatures. So it's part of my mandate as an educator to make sure people learn about these bees before I give them the bees, and trust them with the bees."
Stein Hoff, who kept bees for more than four decades and founded the Sunshine Coast Beekeepers Association, says it's "great" to see the bee-lending program take flight.
Unlike honeybees, mason bees don't have stingers, he said, making them much safer for new bee enthusiasts.
"It's a good thing, it's an easy thing as well," he told CBC News on Tuesday. "But they still do fly from one flower to the next to do their work."
For those who aren't prepared to take on the responsibility of raising a bee family, there are alternative routes to get acquainted with the pollinators.
Bee houses can be found at cemeteries and parks across the North Shore, the result of a woodworking project between the library and the West Vancouver Seniors' Activity Centre, and the bee hotel still takes residence at the library.
Blue orchard mason bees are one of over 450 different bee species found in B.C., according to Urquhart.
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With files from Moira Wyton