Time was, when Greg Thomson went to parties and told people he sold beekeeping supplies in Toronto, he was guaranteed a disheartening laugh.

“I just got kind of fed up,” the manager of F.W. Jones & Son Ltd. in Downsview says now. “I’d say, ‘Yeah, beekeeping, laugh it up’.”

But no more.

Over the past few years, Thomson has seen his business shift from supplying commercial beekeepers outside of Toronto, to increasingly selling to Torontonians keeping a hive or two in their back yards.

Or balcony, or rooftop. He’s seen them all.

Even the Canadian Opera Company is getting in on the act, with the unveiling Wednesday of two hives on the roof of its new Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. Two years ago, the Royal York Hotel began producing its own honey. Fairmont, which owns the Royal York, has expanded the program to eight hotels around the world, including Vancouver, Washington, Kunshan in China, Mount Kenya in Africa and the Mayan Riviera in Mexico.

But it’s the jump in home beekeeping — despite restrictive Ontario laws that hives must be 30 metres from the property line — that has caught the attention of local bee enthusiasts.

“It’s just staggering, in the last 10 years, the change,” says Mylee Nolan, a beekeeper with the Toronto Beekeepers Co-operative, which runs the hives at the Royal York.

Nolan, who learned the trade working for commercial beekeepers in her native Manitoba, says the co-op has seen a surge in volunteers who wantto help out and plan to set up their own hives, she says.

One of Thomson’s customers, Brian Hamlin, keeps hives on the Toronto Islands and near the Leslie Street Spit. He’s been making honey for more than 30 years, since his self-described hippie days living in the Ottawa Valley.

“I was only doing it for friends and family, at first,” Hamlin says, who now sells honey at the St. Lawrence Market.

Selling honey isn’t a big money maker, he says, but it helps cover costs. Hamlin is also working with a group of University of Toronto students to set up a few hives on campus this summer.

Urban beekeeping is growing quickly around the world, and is actively encouraged in places such as New York, Chicago and Paris, which has hives at both the Palais Garnier opera house and the Eiffel Tower.

Debbie Field, executive director of Toronto’s FoodShare community food program, says farms often have only one or two crops, city parks and gardens offer a wide variety of plant life.

“That diversity can really boost production,” says Field, whose agency works closely with the co-op, has had hives for the past nine years and provided the bees to the Royal York.

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Thomson says a number of factors have boosted beekeeping in urban centres, including Toronto. News reports over the past few years of a drop in bee populations across North America — and the implications that holds for plants that require bees for pollination — led to a surge in popularity, he says.

“A lot of people see it as a way to help green the city,” he says.

The move to local food also helps he says, with more people wanting to know where their food comes from.

“For people in the city, this is the closest they’ll ever get to a crop.”

But there’s obviously a much sweeter reason to keep bees: the honey. One hive produces up to 100 pounds of honey in a good year, Thomson says, or about 100 jars at 500 grams each.

And while wet weather the last couple of years has cut yields by up to half, Thomson says hobbyists’ hives have still produced enough honey for the average household, with plenty left for friends, family and co-workers.

“People make up labels at home, print them on their laser printers and they’ve got a very personalized gift,” he says.

Getting started costs about $500 for the hive, the bees and basic equipment. After that, it’s cheaper, with only jars, cleaning supplies and medications to buy.

The shift to more backyard beekeeping has meant Thomson needs to stock smaller jars than when he exclusively supplied commercial beekeepers, but he’s glad to see the shift.

“Now, when I tell people what I do, they lean in and say, ‘Tell me more’.”