University of Guelph starts construction on honey bee research centre
The University of Guelph has officially kicked off construction on a new honey bee research centre on campus.
The Luckevich Pinchin Honey Bee Research Centre (HBRC) is expected to be operational by 2025, with a goal of helping to reduce honeybee colony losses.
The $16-million centre upgrades the existing pollinator research, teaching and public outreach hub that already looks after the largest number of honeybee research colonies in North America.
University officials participated in a groundbreaking event to mark the start of construction on June 14.
The 15,000-square-foot centre will feature indoor and outdoor education spaces, classroom and event space, a laboratory, bee breeding facilities and pollinator gardens, and will be built near Townsend House, the longtime HBRC home on Stone Road.
“This new Honey Bee Research Centre will allow us to scale up research and outreach,” said Dr. John Cranfield, Ontario Agricultural College associate dean external relations. “The new facility will give the centre space to grow its engagement with apiarists, with community members interested in learning more about pollinators and honeybees, and with young people looking to be a part of positive change to support pollinators and to ensure a healthy environment and a safe food supply.”
Among donors to the project, Lydia Luckevich, a 1979 U of G chemistry alumna, will provide $7.5 million. The centre will be named for her and for her late husband, Don Pinchin, who founded Pinchin Ltd., an environmental consulting firm.
The HBRC has operated since 1894 as part of the Ontario Agricultural College at the university. For decades, it has occupied a repurposed 1960s-era bungalow on campus near the campus’s Arboretum. That existing space needs upgrading for growing outreach and research activities, said Cranfield.
Some 4,000 people visit the centre each year; Cranfield said the new facility might accommodate five times that number of visitors, ranging from hobby and commercial apiarists to school groups and community members.
Researchers at U of G and elsewhere use the centre to investigate the causes and potential solutions for recent declines of honeybee colonies, said Paul Kelly, research and apiary manager with the HBRC.
Recent and ongoing research projects include breeding of bees resistant to varroa mites, studying essential plant oils and organic acids for use as naturally occurring miticides, and investigation of prebiotics, probiotics and protein-based nutrition supplements to counter bee gut parasites.
The new centre will provide improved laboratory space for bee breeding and incubation as well as enhanced facilities for various research projects involving U of G faculty members, students and other collaborating investigators.
U of G manages the largest number of research honeybee colonies of any institute in North America. Centre staff tend about 100 hives in the apiary located on the U of G property as well as another 200 hives at the nearby Arkell Research Station and 12 privately run farms within 20 minutes’ drive of campus.
The new centre will be located near the existing bee yard on the site of a former tree nursery run by U of G’s grounds department.
The building was designed by Moriyama Teshima Architects, also designers of the nearby Centennial Arboretum Centre that opened in 1974.