ROOF-TOP beehives on London office blocks are the latest aid in the battle to save our pollinating friends from urban extinction.
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In recent years, the London bee population is thought to have halved.
Already, five firms in and around Holborn area have put apiaries – the name for a group of beehives – on their roofs, the start of a scheme from the inmidtown group that aims to have 560 businesses following suit.
Those first five have a total of 40,000 bees. At that rate, if the rest signed up, there would be five and half million extra bees flying around.
“It just seemed like a great project and staff absolutely love it,” Sam Hudson, of law firm Olswang, told BBC London. Olswang is one of the companies to have installed a roof-top hive.
The inmidtown scheme isn’t the first roof-top bee drive. Back in 2008, when the scale of the missing London bee problem became clear, Fortnum and Mason put an apiary on its roof above Piccadilly.
Meanwhile, this weekend sees the London Honey Festival hit town, with a free public event at the Royal Festival Hall on Sunday.
As might be expected, the festival features honey tasting and observation hives, but it also has honey massages and what they are calling bee-themed music.
