Environment Commissioner and Danish Minister meet 80,000 workers at the EEA

Professor McGlade said: “Keeping bees on our roof provides an excellent opportunity for the EEA to get hands-on experience of caring for the productive systems of our planet. Environmental projects like this show how social and environmental benefits often go hand-in-hand. Hopefully our positive experience can inspire other cities across Europe to start similar projects.”

Bees are a prime example of an undervalued service that nature delivers to human society. Together with other species (mostly insects but also bats and birds) bees play a key role as pollinators – enabling reproduction of plants, wild and domesticated. One attempt to price this service estimates the contribution of insect pollinators to agricultural output may be worth up to US$ 190 billion per year.

Since the introduction of modern agricultural methods, new diseases and other environmental changes, bees have been in decline across Europe. These reasons are not fully understood and research is ongoing.

However, there is some good news - urban beekeeping is increasing. Copenhagen is one of the most recent cities to embrace beekeeping, following Paris, Berlin and Hong Kong. The bees can find plenty of pollen in the parks and gardens of cities, and the honey is generally of a very high quality. In addition, urban beekeeping can raise awareness of the importance of pollinators and contributes to urban biodiversity.

Commissioner Potočnik added: "We take bees for granted, and the same goes for many other  ecosystem services – the soil, air and water that nature provides for free. But we should take more care. Bees are signal species and when we fail to respect their lifestyle, they may no longer be able to help support ours. In the Environment Council this week, we discussed the new Biodiversity Strategy for Europe, setting out objectives and targets towards 2020.  I sincerely hope that we can convince enough people that everyone needs to be part of protecting biodiversity, and that is why initiatives like this one – bringing nature to city centres – are so useful."

Danish Minister of the Environment Karen Ellemann said: “My aim is to actively engage Danes in preserving all of our species. The annual value of pollination from Danish honey bees is estimated at one billion dollars, so it is therefore significant that 3.5 million bees are now being kept in Copenhagen. Urban beekeeping can raise people’s awareness of the importance of pollinators and contribute to the crucial protection of biodiversity.”

The EEA has been keeping bees on its roof since April 2011. The two hives sit on the roof of the five-storey building in central Copenhagen, and during the summer are home to approximately 80,000 bees. These hives will provide an estimated 100kgs of honey per year. The hives are managed by the Bybi (Danish for ‘City Bee’) social enterprise, which trains formerly homeless people in beekeeping.

Biodiversity is also one of the aims of the UN International Year of Forests. To mark this event in 2011, the EEA has also given over its courtyard to an artistic installation representing a forest, featuring living birch trees.

Commissioner Potočnik was visiting the EEA to discuss further collaboration between the EEA and the Commission.

More pictures of the event can be found on our Flickr account. Footage of the event is also available from Europe by Satellite here.

Related Items

• Biodiversity
• Environmental management at the EEA
• 2011 - UN International Year of Forests