Airport Experience® News - Customer Service Issue 2023

SUSTAINABILTY SNAPSHOT

THE NEW BUZZ Airport Apiaries Are Taking Off

BY SALLY KRAL

his May, Akron-Canton Airport (CAK) announced a new initiative to introduce bees to its airfield in partnership with Hartville Honey Bee Farm . “Research on the possibilities of this program has been in the works within the environmental services department since roughly 2021, and we currently house 60 hives on airport property with 16 more joining soon and more planned in the future,” says Adam Dietry, environmental services assistant manager for CAK. “Hartville Honeybee Farm proprietor Mike White has provided and maintained all the hives, bees and queens,” Dietry continues, noting that the local farmer raises colonies and queens that are varroa sensitive hygiene honeybees, which were developed by the USDA to make them more resistant to viruses. Bees are crucial to our ecosystem and they’ve been dying at record rates in recent years, which makes conservation more important than ever. CAK is the latest of numerous North American airports to introduce apiaries on their campuses to help contribute to bee conservation, including Minneapolis– Saint Paul International Airport (MSP), Orlando International Airport (MCO), Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT), Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA) and Toronto Pearson International Airport (YYZ). For some airports, bees have long swarmed their vast campuses, so turning to beekeeping as a means of swarm management—with the added environmental benefits—has been a no-brainer. T

“We ran into a problem a few years ago where we were seeing a lot of swarms of bees around our airport—we have 8,800 acres of land just at Pittsburgh International Airport alone, and we were seeing these swarms throughout our terminals on the outside, getting on the jetways and passenger boarding bridges,” Paul Hoback, executive vice president and chief development officer for Allegheny County Airport Authority , said in a 2022 interview with AXN. “So we worked with a local beekeeper to start developing apiaries and the impact that saving the honeybee population has had on the environment is huge.” Minimal Strain, Maximum Sustainability SEA was an early adopter of airport apiaries, starting its program back in 2013 with as many as 36 hives active along three locations around the airfield. “The project was brought to us by a local non-profit and has turned our unused green spaces, including one former golf course area, into a native pollinator habitat,” says Perry Cooper, senior media relations manager for SEA, adding that the airport has since transitioned to a contract with Sunflower Bee Company , which is on-call for swarm management. “There hasn’t been much of a hassle at all with this program,” Cooper notes. “The initial focus was on creating some habitat that would be safer for airfield operations due to the close proximity to the runways of the closing golf course property. Once we got going with habitat creation and restoration, the idea of a pollinator-friendly habitat and its benefits carried the program.”

Above: Earlier this year Akron-Canton Airport

introduced bees to its airfield in partnership with Hartville Honey Bee Farm. The airport’s environmental services department can test the honey produced by these bees to determine the air quality and the possibility of pollutants caused by air traffic..

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AX NEWS CUSTOMER SERVICE ISSUE 2023