RALEIGH, N.C. — When people think of beekeeping, some may think the best place for beehives is in a rural area. However, as North Carolina cities like Raleigh and Charlotte grow, one Triangle-based startup is proving honeybees can thrive in places some may have never expected, like corporate campuses.
Leigh-Kathryn Bonner, the founder and CEO of Bee Downtown, recently finished installing a “penthouse” of beehives.
“These are the 301 Hillsborough hives. These are some of our newest ones in Raleigh. They have an awesome view of downtown,” Bonner said. “On corporate campuses, it’s fun because when you’re at a building like 301 Hillsborough, you have employees on all the floors so they start to see the smoke rise, and they know the beekeeper is there, so they’ll come to the windows to watch and see what’s going on.”
As a fourth-generation beekeeper, Bonner said she knows her smoker is an essential safety tool.
“We want to get the smoker really well-lit, so we go ahead and we let it get pretty hot. There you go. Here come the flames,” Bonner said.
The N.C. State grad started Bee Downtown in 2015.
“I get to live out my family’s history in agriculture every day, and I get to be reminded what it means to love the Earth every day,” Bonner said.
Bee Downtown sets up and maintains beehives on corporate campuses.
“This opportunity to create an impact in a very small footprint. This is not a big footprint at the 301 Hillsborough building, but it makes a huge impact in the community, with the tenants, the building itself,” Bonner said.
In addition to hives, companies that partner with Bee Downtown get year-round programming for their employees, like hive tours, honey tasting and beekeeping classes.
“Employees fall in love with the bees, like we do. You watch people’s eyes light up on hive tours and you can see it clicked for the first time for them potentially ever and we get to help people have their best day of work ever all the time, which is very rewarding for us as a company,” Bonner said. “If we can start the conversation with the honeybees and education with the honeybees, the impact helps all of the bees along the way.”
Bonner said 2022 has been Bee Downtown’s most successful year yet. It has now partnered with 49 companies across the Triangle and Charlotte. It maintains almost 500 hives in eight cities up and down the East Coast.
“When the hives went in here or the hives go in at Microsoft or Cisco or Invesco, they start to positively impact 18,000 acres of the surrounding community. One honeybee — this one and buzzing around me — she can have 1,200 pollination events a day. They’re helping keep the trees and our environment healthy,” Bonner said.
At the core of Bonner’s business is the philosophy to do no harm, a concept that’s usually adopted by the companies that Bee Downtown partners with.
“Some people say, 'Why would you put honeybees on campuses?' 'Why would you bring them into cities?' For us, all of our corporate partners, the minute these beehives go on the campus, we start working with their landscaping crews. We start working with their employees and they say, 'How can I replant my yard to be more pollinator-friendly?' The company stops spraying as many chemicals,” Bonner said.
Those are just some examples of changes that are made to better the environment because of Bee Downtown’s hives, according to Bonner.
“Everything a honeybee touches she leaves better than she found it. The flowers she pollinates — people don’t even see her pollinating those flowers — but when you step outside you see life and you see color and you see healthy trees and that ripple effect, it matters and it works," Bonner said. "No one is too small to make a big difference, and if they think they are, they’ve never met a honeybee.
“A big issue we have in cities is just like how we have food deserts for humans in cities and in other areas. There are also food deserts for bees because we clear-cut and we build all this infrastructure, and then we don’t build back in food for the pollinators,” Bonner continued.
Bee Downtown jars the honey from each partner and gives it back to the company and its employees. Bee Downtown was started in the Triangle, but it has a large presence in Atlanta and is now focusing on expanding in the Tampa and Orlando areas.