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This October, we’re celebrating Airport Safety Week alongside the Australian Airports Association, and while safety might not...
We aren’t really sure why bees have such a hard time defending their ability to fly, it seems that this opening quote from 2007’s Bee Movie has a lot to do with it:
"According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way that a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyways. Because bees don't care what humans think is impossible."
But what we are sure is that bees have been around much longer than laws of aviation. We also know from working with local bee advocate, Jack Stone from Bee One Third, that honeybees contribute to over one third of our global food supply through pollination and that without bees, we would lose access to over 90 varieties of fresh food.
Since 2019, Bee One Third have managed our BNE Bee Hives located on our dedicated 285ha biodiversity zone growing our colony from eight original hives and creating the starting point for the northern Brisbane pollination corridor connecting the Boondall Wetlands, Deagon, Taigum and out to the northern ranges of Brisbane.
Still find it un-bee-lievable that Brisbane Airport has bees? Here’s the 1,2,3 of facts you need to know about our BNE bees.
1. The BNE bee colonies
We currently have 30 European honeybee hives located on our Biodiversity Zone with an estimated eight individual colonies on site. Between 30,000 and 80,000 bees live in each colony so up to 640,000 bees could be calling our BNE Wetlands home.
2. Sweet, sweet honey
Our bees are buzzy producing an increasing amount of BNE Wetlands Honey a year. Bees forage up to 5km from their hive and our BNE bees will be sourcing their pollen from the local flora in the surrounding wetlands area which features mangroves and casuarina. Our honey is a mix of grey leaf Mangrove and tea tree nectar, foraged from the Leptospermum flowers.
3. Our beekeeper
Local bee advocate, Jack Stone from Bee One Third manages the BNE hives and produces our BNE Wetlands Honey. Jack’s mission is to reconnect communities with the reality of what pollinators do for our food system, our health and overall well-being.
Our BNE Bees are a fantastic way to contribute back to the diversity of an airport region because they are a managed ecosystem so they are never flying rogue. In a managed beehive like ours, we replace our ‘Queens’ every few years to maintain a calm productive and healthy population.
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