Honeybee numbers have been in drastic decline in recent years, but Leigh-Kathryn Bonner believes setting up urban hives – on top of offices – may help them recover.
Humanity depends on honeybees for its survival.
But in recent years, honeybee populations have crashed in many parts of the world. It’s thought that climate change and a range of pollutants, from diesel fumes to neonicotinoid pesticides, are contributing factors to their dramatic decline.
Entrepreneur Leigh-Kathryn Bonner’s solution? Enlist office workers to boost bee populations by setting up hives at their workplaces.
“Seventy of the world’s top 100 food crops are thanks to honeybees. Each year, in the United States, we lose about 40% of the bees,” she tells the BBC. Her start-up, Bee Downtown, puts hives on the roofs of offices and campuses, and enlists the help of the customers’ own workers to tend the hives. “It’s a fully built-out employee engagement, leadership development and sustainability programme,” the fourth-generation beekeeper says.
“Their employees are putting on a different kind of suit for the day – a beekeeper suit.”
In its first four years, the start-up homed some 7.5 million bees in workplaces around the US – including the New York Stock Exchange.
So, while many people have been away from the office over the past year, when they return they may have the option of tending to a hive and helping nature too.
Bright Sparks: Sustainability
This article is part of BBC Future’s Bright Sparks: Sustainability series, which sets out to find the young minds who are finding new and innovative ways of tackling environmental problems. They are the next generation of engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs who are taking control of their own future by seeking solutions to climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss and over-consumption.