MO Hives KC broke ground on the area’s first urban bee farm April 25, 2020, on vacant property owned by Community Builders of Kansas City (CBKC), at 5030 Wabash. Across the street from the thriving Blue Hills Community Garden, the bee farm is the first of many the organization intends to build in its mission to engage urban residents in creating pollinator habitats using previously vacant and/or blighted land to support the community’s health and wellness.

“We are starting a movement here,” said Dr. Marion Spence Pierson, a pediatrician with special interest in education and urban community service and MO Hives KC co-founder. “We got some energy from Detroit Hives’ founders, Timothy Paule and Nicole Lindsay. They were motivated by a passion for bee conservation and education as well as urban revitalization to start transforming their city’s abandoned lots into urban bee farms in 2017. I went to visit with them last fall and then they came to Kansas City, all to see how we could extend what they started here.”

MO Hives has been busy creating partnerships with entities including the Kansas City Public Schools, area charter schools such as African-Centered Prep, the Kansas City (Region 5) chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE); and two NSBE, Jr., chapters founded by the Jackson County (MO) Chapter of The Links, Incorporated, an international volunteer organization of professional women of color. Area leaders such as Rep. Barbara Washington, former Sen. Shalonn “Kiki” Curls and Brian Reeves, avid bee keeper and co-founder of MO Hives KC, were introduced to Detroit Hives leaders Paule and Lindsay.

“We want to bring a diverse set of voices to this conversation,” Pierson added. “We want people to know that you can get into this field of knowledge, get training and have a level of expertise that is needed.” Beekeeping (or apiculture) on a global level is a $10 billion market involving industries from food and beverage to pharmaceuticals and touches STEM education sectors from entomology to agricultural-related engineering.

MO Hives KC’s mission encompasses what it calls its “hive five” goals encompassing education about bees and other healthy pollinators, beautification, economics, food security and the sciences. Those goals and more were introduced at the April groundbreaking where volunteers planted native wild flowers and saplings, prepped the bee hive setting and learned how they could create bee-friendly plantings in their own backyards.

“This is a community development movement, too,” said Pierson. “Pollinators are essential to food production. If you help nurture healthy pollinators you help grow produce and if you do that in your neighborhood, you help your community.”