Urban Honeybees are ‘Having a Moment’ — but it’s not all Milk and Honey

Urban rooftops around the country are abuzz with intentionally placed beehives, writes Andrew Zaleski in Bloomberg CityLab. Since New York City ended a ban on urban bees in 2010, the number of registered hives in that city grew from 68 to over 400.

Many of these hives are managed by commercial operations similar to the ones that move hives from farm to farm to help pollinate crops, and urban beekeepers say they want to help save the honeybee population from recent fears of collapse. “But raising honeybees in a city has raised environmental concerns, too. Apis mellifera, the European honeybees that are so important for commercial agriculture in North America, are not native to the continent, and they can outcompete and spread disease to native, wild bee species.”

Experts note that keeping bees is “not inherently bad,” but it is not necessarily a conservation measure. Rather, it is more akin to keeping chickens. Urban bees can also help maintain the health of plants and green spaces and thus habitat for other local pollinator species.