CSL Behring employees in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania recently got thousands of new neighbors. King of Prussia District, in partnership with commercial beekeeping group Avéole, recently installed an apiary, or beehive, at the front of 935 First Avenue.
The apiary is located just blocks from where CSL Behring, a global biotech leader that specializes in treatments for rare and serious diseases, has offices in King of Prussia.
The King of Prussia site is one of several locations throughout the Philadelphia region where apiaries are being installed in an effort to boost the local honeybee population because the bees are important pollinators in the ecosystem.
During the recent installation in King of Prussia, beekeeper Hayley Botts from Avéole was on site and talked about the bees to a small group of observers. She even let some brave onlookers handle bees, explaining that it was safe because the larger drone bees (which are the only males in a hive) are without stingers and docile enough to hold. The worker bees in a hive are all female, Botts explained, and these bees do have stingers.
By the end of the summer, the hive could consist of as many as 50,000 bees, Botts said. One of those 50,000 bees is the queen bee, which already has been given a name by King of Prussia District – Queen of Prussia.
To keep up with this hive throughout the summer, visit their blog. And if you’re in the King of Prussia area this summer you may even have a chance to visit the bees, as Botts will return to the site every three weeks to check in on the bees and speak with anyone interested in learning more about honeybees and beekeeping.
