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Churchyard beehives support London multicultural organization

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A London church is helping make life a little sweeter this holiday season for a local non-profit organization.

For a second year, honey from beehives located behind St. Aidan’s Anglican Church on Oxford Street West is being sold to support LUSO Community Services.

Beekeeper Peter Andersen explains, "We sell it for $20 a jar. It is very good honey. We raised over $5,000 in honey sales and then that amount this year was matched by the St. Aidan’s community here, by multiple donors, and we are donating $11,000 to LUSO."

LUSO's Leroy Hibbert says the support is much appreciated.

"This financial support is just brilliant and truly a blessing to what we’re trying to do to serve a community that’s facing some hardships right now."

LUSO is a multicultural agency that works with those in need in our city.

"Well we’ve got youth programs, we’ve got literacy programs, we’ve got programs that deal with students and people from different walks of life so we have a holistic approach to deal with humanity," Hibbert says.

For Andersen, it's about coming together.

"We work together to produce this honey and to look after the bees. As a community we have conservations around ecology and community and need and then when we include LUSO in that it’s just a really good thing."

And year after year the colonies produce more honey. In 2021 they were able to collect 275 jars.

St. Aidan's Reverend Kevin George says the spirit of giving is essential at this time of the year.

"One of the relationships we like to emphasize in the church is our relationship with nature and with God’s creation and having the bees here alongside of greenhouse that we use to grow vegetables for the food bank in the city that the bees pollinate -- they produce honey and LUSO is busy helping those who are struggling most in this city in some of our most impoverished areas and so for us we saw it as a great win-win."

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