There is a new buzz in towns and cities in Great Britain. Beekeeping, normally practised by people living in the country, has become a fashionable hobby for those who live and work in the cities. It is now estimated that there are more worker bees in London than there are working people.
Beekeepers living in the towns have begun to outnumber those in the country because plants growing in towns can offer more exciting nectar (the bee’s basic food) than fields in the countryside. These fields have often been treated with pesticides which are harmful to bees.
Membership of the British Beekeepers Association has almost doubled to 10,500 over the past three years in the biggest increase since the peak in the 1980s. This was just before a parasitic mite killed off millions of bees. One spokesman for the Association said, “Home-made honey from the towns is an entirely different product. Depending on the time of year, you get the different flavours of whatever the bees have been feeding on. You don’t get such variety with honey from the country.”
Young people are now queuing to join bee-keeping courses which are often over-subscribed. There are waiting lists to buy expensive beehives, costing around £100 each. Some people keep their beehives on terraces on their roofs, others in small gardens at the back of their houses.
Aysha Singh, who teaches classes on bee-keeping, said, “Most of those who join the bee-keeping course are young people. It’s a rebellion against the lifestyle of the office worker. These young people want to get outside as well as do more physical and manual activities. One man says that he can’t eat the honey as he is diabetic but he keeps bees because he needs some variety in his life.”
Bee-keeping is not a strenuous activity. Most experts say that hives need to be checked only once every seven to ten days, when the bees are at their most active, between April and July.
There are disadvantages, however. Jane West, who has just started keeping 60,000 bees in a hive near to a city centre, has already been stung a few times. “It didn’t hurt as much as I expected,” she said. “Bees are not threatening in the same way as wasps are. They are nice little creatures with complex social- structures. They are also good for the garden when they take the nectar from the flowers.” Jane restricts the number of bees she keeps because she thinks their humming sound “might frighten the neighbours”.
Warmer temperatures in towns and cities mean that the bees keep active longer. In addition, a beehive in the town produces about 20 kilos of honey a year, twice as much as in country areas.
What do the urban bee-keepers do with all that honey? People say that they give much of it away, especially to the neighbours… probably to keep them sweet!
8. Give four advantages of bee-keeping in towns and cities rather than in country areas.
