Hive Mind: Eliese Watson Builds
Community Through Bees
Eliese Watson is on a private property in the NW of the city, close to the Bow River. She releases some smoke towards a tiered hive box, with small honey bees (much smaller than the bumble bees you’ll find in your backyard) buzzing in and out, before lifting the lid to replace frames that had been extracted of their honey the day before. 12
story by ELIZABETH CHORNEY-BOOTH Photography by INGRID KUENZEL
The box is labeled with the logo for the Ox and Angela restaurant—the proud owner of the bees, the hive, and any honey this particular colony of bees produces. Watson has been running A.B.C. (Apiaries and Bees For Communities) for five years, and while bees are how she makes her living, she doesn’t bottle or sell honey. Instead, she’s an educator and a community builder who, along with the rest of her team at A.B.C., teaches new beekeepers the ins-andouts of managing hives, while working with the larger urban community to
create awareness of bees’ place in our ecology. “The Bees 4 Communities project is about trying to offer people opportunities to get in and learn and build community,” Watson says. “Because you open up that beehive and you see a social environment of individuals working together in cohesion for generations in the future. And when they take from nature they give back in exponential form.” If you eat out a lot in Calgary, you’ve probably tasted honey bees that Watson