MacEwan University is officially a designated Bee Campus, joining a growing network of post-secondary institutions across Canada committed to supporting pollinators and their habitats.
The designation is awarded through Bee City Canada, a non-profit organization that works with communities, municipalities and campuses to raise awareness about the importance of pollinators and encourage meaningful action to protect them.
Becoming a Bee Campus recognizes the work already underway across MacEwan to support pollinators and creates opportunities to build on these efforts.
“Our campus is home to a variety of hands-on initiatives that provide food, shelter, and habitat for pollinators,” says Bonnie Dong, manager of sustainability. “Between our community garden, native plantings and perennial beds, MacEwan helps create habitat for pollinators in the urban environment.”
The MacEwan Urban Beekeeping Project, which has been operating for a decade, is also an important part of this work. Through the project’s volunteer program, students, staff and faculty volunteers, called “beekeeping assistants,” can learn about honeybees and beekeeping while gaining hands-on experience caring for and monitoring the hives.
Supporting pollinators also means helping the campus community understand why they matter. Throughout the year, MacEwan Sustainability offers educational and engagement activities to make pollinator conservation accessible and engaging. As they learn about pollinators, plants and biodiversity through beekeeping presentations, community garden activities, seed bomb and bee hotel workshops, participants build connections between the campus community and the natural world around it.
The Bee Campus designation also connects MacEwan with other colleges and universities across Canada that are taking action to support pollinators.
“We look forward to continuing this work, learning from other institutions and finding new ways to create habitat, share knowledge and engage our campus community in protecting and supporting pollinators,” says Dong.