Give your Ottawa buildings an engagement program tenants talk about.
Why urban beekeeping works for Ottawa buildings
Ottawa is unusually well set up for urban beekeeping. The National Capital Commission's Greenbelt wraps roughly 20,000 hectares of protected forest, farmland, and wetland around the city, and the Rideau Canal corridor, the Ottawa and Rideau rivers, and the Central Experimental Farm's arboretum thread green space right through the downtown core. That gives rooftop hives continuous forage within range, not just isolated patches.
Local policy backs it up. The City's Official Plan, in effect since 2022, commits Ottawa to protecting and connecting its natural heritage system citywide, the greenspaces and corridors pollinators depend on. And Ontario has banned pesticides for cosmetic use across the province since 2009, reducing the chemical load bees encounter.
How an urban beekeeping program works in Ottawa
A living amenity tenants actually use
Year-round events
Participation data that compounds
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Meet the neighborhood bees
VIA Rail's Ottawa station runs two honey bee hives with Alvéole, tucked in beside the tracks downtown. The bees give the station's team and the people passing through something local to follow across the season, from the first spring inspections to the summer honey harvest. It's become a regular part of how VIA Rail tells its environmental story.
Turning your hives into insight
Data collection and instant reporting
Remote sensing establishes baseline indicators across your portfolio, while onsite monitoring (bioacoustics and eDNA) captures species presence and habitat quality at each property. That data feeds directly into TNFD, CSRD, and GRESB reports, generated in minutes from pre-filled templates, with audit trails showing exactly where each number comes from.
Portfolio dashboard and AI agent
See biodiversity trends across all assets, benchmark each property against portfolio average, and export site-level data for individual disclosures. Ask the AI agent questions about TNFD requirements, GRESB scoring, or site-specific risks, and get answers that reference your actual portfolio data and current framework standards.
We service hives across Ottawa and the National Capital Region, on both sides of the river, including:
- Kanata
- Nepean
- Gloucester
- Orléans
- Barrhaven
- Stittsville
- Vanier
- Rockcliffe Park
- Cumberland
- Manotick
- Gatineau
- Hull
- Aylmer
- Chelsea
and more...
Alvéole in the media
FAQ
Yes. Urban beekeeping in Ottawa is governed by Ontario's Bees Act, which requires every hive to be registered annually with the province and kept at least 30 metres from neighbouring homes, parks, or community spaces, and 10 metres from any highway. Alvéole handles registration and siting for every install, to meet provincial setback rules.
Alvéole sites hives based on local forage density rather than adding to already-busy blocks, and pairs each honeybee hive with wild bee habitat (BeeHome) to support Ontario's native pollinators too, not just honeybees.
The active season runs roughly May through September, driven by eastern Ontario's climate and bloom cycle. That's also when most tenant-facing events land, hive tours, harvest days, and workshops, so the program's busiest stretch lines up with the season buildings actually want tenant programming.
Yes. Alvéole keeps Italian honey bees, a breed known for its docility, and honey bees are not aggressive away from the hive, rarely stinging unless it's disturbed. Alvéole's beekeepers site hives away from high-traffic rooftop areas and manage all hive access, so tenants interact with the program through workshops and events, not the hive directly.
Yes. Alvéole's program contributes to BOMA 360, BOMA BEST, BREEAM, Fitwel, GRESB, LEED, and WELL, through pollinator habitat, tenant engagement documentation, and biodiversity monitoring.
They stay in the hive. Honey bees don't hibernate or migrate. Through Ottawa's long, cold winter, the colony clusters tightly around the queen and vibrates to generate heat, living off the honey it stored through summer. Before the cold sets in, Alvéole winterizes each hive, reducing the entrance, adding insulation, and confirming the colony has enough stores to reach spring. Tenant programming keeps running through winter with indoor workshops, and hands-on hive visits pick back up in spring once the colony is active again.
