[Pollinator] Everyone got so into the idea of urban beekeeping that now there might be too many urban bees

[David Inouye]

https://www.fastcompany.com/90716696/everyone-got-so-into-the-idea-of-urban-beekeeping-that-now-there-might-be-too-many-urban-bees?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Top+news%3A&utm_campaign=ATF+Daily


  * 01-28-22
  * 6:00 am
  * world changing ideas
    <https://www.fastcompany.com/section/world-changing-ideas>


  Everyone got so into the idea of urban beekeeping that now there might
  be too many urban bees
  <https://www.fastcompany.com/90716696/everyone-got-so-into-the-idea-of-urban-beekeeping-that-now-there-might-be-too-many-urban-bees>


    What happens when every company decides that the sustainable thing
    is to put a beehive on the roof.

[Photo: alle/Getty Images, Lucas Franco/Unsplash 
<https://unsplash.com/photos/4tLJHWo0BEM>]


Urban beekeeping is big business: Alvéole, one company based in 
Montreal, manages thousands of beehives 
<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-01-07/paris-leads-urban-honey-push-as-beekeeping-goes-corporate> 
on the rooftops of more than 600 office buildings in North America, at 
corporations that host bees (and offer free honey) as an employee perk 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/25/business/return-to-office.html>. You 
can pay other companies to take care of a beehive in your backyard 
<https://bestbees.com/residential-beekeeping-services/>.

The number of hives in cities keeps growing. In Paris, for example, the 
number of registered hives has jumped up by a factor of eight over the 
last decade. It’s billed as good for nature. But a recent study 
<https://www.nature.com/articles/s42949-021-00046-6> that looked at the 
growth of beekeeping in Swiss cities finds that the number of bees is 
now unsustainable: When the bees fly out to find pollen, there aren’t 
enough urban flowers to support them. And the honeybees may be putting 
pressure on other pollinators.

In Switzerland, the researchers saw the same trend that’s happening 
elsewhere, with strong growth in beekeeping in almost ever city between 
2012 and 2018 (in the Swiss city of Lugano, which they studied, the 
number of hives grew 2,387%). Then they looked at the green space 
available around clusters of hives. In each city, there weren’t enough 
“floral resources” for the huge number of new bees.

The study doesn’t analyze how the surplus of bees might be impacting 
other wildlife, but it does note that honeybees can negatively impact 
the number of wild pollinators in an area. In a place like the U.S., 
where European honeybees were imported for agriculture, they compete 
with wild bees 
<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-problem-with-honey-bees/> 
and butterflies, which are already at risk for other reasons, from 
pesticide use to climate change.

Adding more green space and pollinator-friendly plants in cities would 
help. But the study suggests that cities also need to set limits on the 
proliferation of urban honeybees, with the number of hives allowed in 
any particular area limited by the amount of green space nearby and 
enough distance between hives. And companies that are adding bees to 
make their image greener—something that some critics have called 
“bee-washing” 
<https://ricochet.media/en/3404/beewashing-and-the-business-of-honey-bees>—might 
want to rethink their plans.

-- 
Dr. David W. Inouye
Professor Emeritus
Department of Biology
University of Maryland

Principal Investigator
Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory


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