Toronto real estate company now making honey

Toronto now has a new honey option that's about as local as it gets, and this one's from a surprising source.

Allied Properties REIT, a local real estate company that owns a lot of properties in the King West area, has started producing honey on the rooftops of three of its buildings.

It's all made possible thanks to Alveole, a Montreal-based company that happens to also have a location on Geary Avenue.

Alveole supplies beekeeping kits, educates and helps care for hives that are intended to transform urban spaces into ones that foster and sustain the natural environment.

The two King West properties are home to around 50,000 honeybees, which is good news since honey bees faced a crisis a few years back that saw their numbers decline across North America due to harmful insecticides.

According to Stats Can, bee colonies are on the upswing. And thanks to companies like Alvéole, urban beekeeping has become more accessible than ever.

This is the first batch of honey produced by Allied so far and is not for sale. So far, Allied plans to just make the honey available to its residents.