London's Urban Beekeeping Scene Is Exploding

The next time you're in downtown London shopping for a summer dress, keep an eye out for a giant, writhing mass of winged, stinging insects.

In the past five years, the number of beehives in London has roughly doubled, increasing the city's supply of delicious, super locally-produced honey, but also irritating and alarming denizens with summertime bee swarms (more on those later). Those figures come from Mark Patterson, the forage officer for the London Beekeepers' Association (LBKA). According to England's National Bee Unit (NBU), which maintains a register of beekeepers and apiary locations, London currently has around 1,400 beekeepers and about 4,000 colonies. But, as Patterson clarifies, those figures are inexact; while beekeepers in many American cities must register with their respective local governments, English beekeepers only report to the Bee Unit if they want to. Only about 75 percent of beekeepers do, Patterson says, and he therefore estimates London's numbers at about 2,000 beekeepers and around 5,000 colonies. And the NBU predicts that hive numbers will continue to increase, at a rate of about 11 percent per quarter.

Patterson attributes the rapid growth of London's beekeeping scene to city dwellers' desire to reestablish a relationship with the nature, even in a setting as densely packed as nine-million-strong London.

"There are many in the city who become disconnected from the natural environment, and beekeeping allows them to reconnect with nature in a very intimate way," he says.

London is a city that on the surface would seem well-suited to keeping of bees, which require a significant amount of forage—nectar-rich pollinating plants—on which to feed. According to data from Green Space Information for Greater London, it contains 61 percent green space by land area, with tree canopy covering about 22 percent of the city. But look a little closer at the type of forage available, Patterson says, and you'll see that not all of it is ideal for nourishing the city's increasing number of hives.

"Some parts of the city's green areas are little more than green deserts," he writes in a report he compiled comparing London beekeeping with American urban beekeeping. Many of London's trees are sterile, he notes, meaning they don't flower and can't provide nectar for the city's hives. And because London's bee population is increasing at a pace much faster than its greenery, trendy new bees might soon run out of food.

"In some areas of the city, we may have reached saturation point, where numbers of hives have reached the limits of what local forage can support," he writes in his report.

Still, though, London's got a lot going for it when it comes to urban beekeeping. Although bees might not have access to enough forage, the type of forage they have access to is both unique and incredibly pristine. Although rural areas are full of flowering crops that easily feed large numbers of bees, those agricultural crops are treated intensively with pesticides, increasing the potential for a tainted honey crop; Andrew Cote of the NYC Beekeepers Association pointed MUNCHIES toward a 2013 French study that confirmed this phenomenon. So in spite of some honey consumers' misconception that city honey is somehow tainted, it might actually be the safer choice. Plus, Patterson notes, it tastes great.

"London bees make great tasting honey—it's like nothing found anywhere else. The unique city microclimate—the mix of native and exotic plants—leads to a complex-tasting honey, often with a tangy aftertaste thanks to London's lime trees."

The single biggest challenge when it comes to urban beekeeping is finding the space for the hives, Patterson says. London's got an advantage there, too, as its many rooftops and terraces provide ideal nooks for a small- to medium-sized hive.

A big problem for urban honey producers, though, is yield. Rural bees might produce tainted honey, but because of their access to so many crops they can produce a lot of it. Not so in London, Patterson says.

"Our honey yields are 30 percent below the UK average in most years," he says. "In fact, over the past decade London has consistently had the lowest honey yields as indicated by the British Beekeepers' Association." On the flip side, honey's rarity enables producers to charge a lot of money for it.

"Every year we are receiving more and more requests for honey," Patterson says. "A typical one-pound jar has gone from £6 euros to £12 in the past five years."

Though most Londoners seem quite enamored of the burgeoning honeybee scene—Patterson notes that LBKA's membership has doubled in recent years, and that many members don't even keep bees but simply want to support the association's efforts—urban apiaries do occasionally run into a public image problem when bees swarm. Swarming season in the UK peaks around May, when bee colonies grow too large and the queen bee splits from her hive, taking about a third of her colony with her to establish a new one. As the bees search, they often land in highly public places, such as on the sides of buildings, and the sight of thousands of insects can alarm Londoners and even interfere with commerce, as happened at a Victoria Street Topshop last May.

"A real challenge can be swarm management," Patterson says. "Swarms can cause panic among the public and distress to your neighbors. In recent years we have seen on several occasions swarms in central London causing loss of trade to shops and restaurants, because the swarms settle in inappropriate places."