The Buzz on Urban Bees

Is downtown the hip new in-spot for bees? Indeed, it turns out that French bees are finding a chic new home on the rooftops of Paris — while across the Atlantic in Canada, scientists have tagged a hitherto-unidentified species of bee buzzing about in downtown Toronto. What could be behind this unexpected habitat shift?

As dismaying as it sounds, the truth may be that bees are thriving more in cities because pesticides and environmental conditions are less and less amenable in the country. A French hotelier who keeps bees on her Paris rooftop told The New York Times that the bees thrive there because "flowers and plants are changed constantly and there aren't pesticides." The French are encouraging urban beekeeping with a three-year-old program — the largest of its kind in the world — designed to help bolster sagging bee populations nationwide.

Across the ocean in Toronto, the urban landscape provided an ironic collection point for a previously unidentified species of bee, later identified by a York University doctoral student working to track bee diversity. Although the newly identified species is common throughout  eastern Canada and the United States,  its identification will help scientists track bee movements and discern changes in their population.

The buzz about the sudden, massive and mysterious disappearance of honey bees has been building for several years now. Nobody's quite sure what's behind such a catastrophic decline. It's no secret that colony collapse disorder, viruses and even exceptionally hard winters are clipping the wings of hives worldwide. Still, no single, definitive answer seems to be emerging. The dangers of waning bee populations are as devastating to humans as they are to the ecosystem at large. A huge proportion of the food that humans eat — estimates range from one-third of the world food supply to a whopping 90 percent of commercial crops — is made possible by honeybee pollination.

Given the dire consequences of the continuing loss of our bees, urban beekeeping may be a small yet increasingly worthwhile conservation effort.  As Parisian beekeeper Olivier Darne told the NY Times,  "Bees are dying everywhere but in cities. The bees are speaking to us."

Photo credit: Payton Chung