If local beekeeper Craig Nakamoto gets his way, Huntsville students and community members at large will know a lot more about the plight of bees.<\/p>\n
He is proposing to set up a couple of beehives on the roof of Town Hall, thereby pioneering urban beekeeping in Muskoka.<\/p>\n
He said the plan would be to harvest the honey and have local students help with the extraction and bottling process and raise funds, which would go back into the schools.<\/p>\n
Each year a different school could be involved. The capped frames of honey would be removed from the roof of Town Hall by him and two other qualified beekeepers, and taken to the school for processing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe goal is to use the beehives to promote education of honeybees and pollinators,\u201d said Nakamoto, who is a member of the Muskoka-Parry Sound Beekeeper\u2019s Association.<\/p>\n
He said the plight of bees has been in the media for the last couple of years. \u201cA lot of the problems that the beehives are having I think you can draw parallels to the problems that we\u2019re having in our society. So I think it\u2019s important for people to understand what\u2019s going on with the bees and to understand that we may be facing similar problems,\u201d he said, referring not only to the chemicals in our environment like pesticides and herbicides but the quantity of antibiotics we ingest.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s surprisingly similar to people. For example a lot of beekeepers, mainly it\u2019s large scale commercial beekeepers, they just automatically give antibiotics to their bees just like cattle producers do and chicken farmers \u2013 they all do it now. But the problem is, just like with people, if you keep taking antibiotics they become less and less effective. Craig Nakamoto<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
He said the project also aims to promote more awareness of pollinators and how important they are for many of our crops and agriculture.<\/p>\n
Nakamoto pitched the idea to the Town\u2019s General Committee on November 25, as a community sustainability project and is hoping it\u2019ll be approved by Huntsville council at its December meeting. If approved, the beehives would be placed on the roof sometime in March or April of next year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of cities that have done the same thing. They\u2019ve actually got beehives at their city halls like Ottawa, for example, Vancouver, and I just thought it would be a fun thing to do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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