What’s the buzz about Beezzz in ALCHEMIA?

29 June 2018

Four beehives have been recently installed on top of the ARGON building, all populated by real-life honeybees. While the TORUS Beezzz project was our idea, more and more of our tenants want to see what the buzz is about!

The ARGON rooftop is now home to four colonies of honeybees – three owned by TORUS and one by the Sugoi Sushi restaurant, which is located on the ground floor of ARGON. Each hive is home to approx. 7kg of honeybees – about 80,000 insects, but the swarms are expected to grow to 100,000. The volume of each hive is approx. 87 litres and the honeycomb surface area measures 3.72 sq. m. The „lease negotiations” between TORUS and our busy tenants took a few months, beginning in Autumn 2017. Beekeepers conducted a detailed analysis of the ARGON building’s location and roof structure to guarantee optimal business conditions for their „client”. In the end, they gave us the green light to expand the Tricity bee workforce.

The presence of bees atop ARGON is no coincidence – it follows careful analysis of current ecological trends. Every day we put in a lot of effort to ensure our buildings receive the best certification, so they can offer optimal conditions for business development and the people working there. We have now decided to take interest in another kind of tenant – one much smaller, but equally demanding. At the same time, we are addressing the ongoing problem of the declining global population of bees.

MONIKA BRZOZOWSKA, TORUS, CREATOR OF TORUS BEEZZZ

Despite the hives situated on top of a 14-floor building, the bees can cover a 2km radius (about 1,250ha). Urban beekeeping is becoming more popular, with some experts saying it is also becoming more efficient. No wonder the trend is the bee’s knees in Poland, with several hundred beehives in Warsaw alone, on top of Eurocetrum, the Palace of Culture and Science and the Grand Theatre. We still have a long way to catch up to other Western capitals like London and Berlin, where there are thousands of hives. For example, the city of Paris is home to several apiaries on top of some of its landmarks, like the Paris Opera House and the Notre Dame Cathedral.

Because there are not so many bees in cities it is easier for a swarm to obtain pollen to make honey and there is no spraying of honey plants. The Buckfast bee breed, which has made its home atop the ARGON building, is not aggressive while remaining strong and hard-working. The bees’ effectiveness depends on local weather, though we can estimate that these four beehives will, during the honey season, produce two to three different kinds of honey – wildflower, lime and even acacia. Each hive should give us up to 15kg of honey.

TOMASZ WOJTIUK, BEEUP.PL, MEMBER OF THE POLISH BEEKEEPING ASSOCIATION

Bees have become a trending topic in Poland a few years ago when their declining populations due to human-made activity had been noticed. Since then, various beekeeping bodies and institutes have attempted to protect honeybees and, thanks to Polish business owners getting involved, this has resulted in the increasing popularity of urban beekeeping.

A worker bee spends the first two weeks of its life inside the hive, cleaning it and feeding the larvae. It spends the next two weeks working 24-hour shifts outside collecting pollen and nectar and coming in for the night to help ventilate the colony to maintain optimal temperature conditions. Sadly, there is no such thing as retirement for bees and after 36-41 days they die…unless they make it to the end of the honey making season, where instead of a 28-day career they get to hibernate for six to nine months.

Bees are unable to survive outside their colony and so in beekeeping we tend to think of hive clusters as single biological entities rather than made up of individual insects. While most animal species only have two sexes - male and female, bees have three – the male drones, the numerous female worker bees and the queen (numbered 78 on one of the photos). Worker bees have very specific tasks and their work inside the hive depends on their age.

For us, honeybees are a very interesting and valuable insect species. We encourage you to get to know them better, as their behaviour and lifestyle are worth following.