Urban beekeeping in Italy, an engine of social innovation. There is no innovation in even a city farming practice. We witness exhilarating accounts of young beekeepers in cities all over the world in which the hallmark trait emerges, that of raising bees on the roofs of houses and doing biomonitoring. But is this really what urban beekeeping is all about? First we take the veil off a new national project, discovering Italian urban beekeeping.
Urban beekeeping in Italy, history and virtues
Beekeeping in Italy
– as has already been mentioned
– Is a crucial sector of national animal husbandry. Not only because of the economic value of its productions, but especially because of the function of the bee and its thousands of other like species. Serving agricultural production and biodiversity, i.e., protecting rural and sylvan areas not subject to intensive cultivation plagued by poisonous pesticides.
To Don Giacomo Angeleri one owes the most significant experience for the development of modern beekeeping in the early 1900s. Indeed, Don Angeleri experimented with an innovative form of beekeeping in hives and had the ability to popularize and spread this practice, which is very similar to the one still in use today. His bees were located on the banks of the Po River, in Turin, where until recently his experimental apiary was still present. And it was also to him that we owe the idea of a pioneering a stall of
street food
, the House of Good Honey
, opened in 1920 in front of the Royal Palace. To raise awareness of the virtues of bee nectar and promote nutrition education.
Modern urban beekeeping is based on the experiences of the early 1980s, when the universities of Turin and Bologna introduced the idea of employing bees as ‘environmental matrices,’ as sentinels measuring the health of the environment. In more recent age, the ‘Bees and Urban Gardens‘ project. made it possible to carry out environmental analyses in some Italian cities (Milan, Bologna, Potenza, Turin), the first outcomes of which (2017-2018) were presented on 30.1.19 at the FICO foundation. Thanks to bees and their devotees, in just one year the city of Milan experienced a drastic reduction in pesticide levels. It was enough to request and obtain from the city administration the suspension of treatments of green areas, during the flowering periods of honey plants, with glyphosate and other pesticides. To recover, already in 12 months, at least some health for the ecosystem and its inhabitants.
Urban beekeeping and bee pastures vs. urban beekeeping
Raising bees requires special training and a lot of practice in order to be able to deal with the not insignificant dangers that animals may encounter (e.g., predators, diseases). Added to this are the responsibilities and legal charges, which are prescribed to operate a beehive as a chicken coop and other animal husbandry activities. Health records, traceability, good hygiene practices and self-control, mandatory mite treatments
Varroa Destructor.
, compliance of the production laboratory with sanitation requirements.
However, conducting bees in the city, producing metropolitan honey, maintaining hives on rooftops is not urban beekeeping. It is simply animal husbandry, a practice of keeping wild animals carried out in the city but still only beekeeping, therefore beekeeping in the city. There is no innovation or value restitution in the host city, nor is there an objective path of biodiversity preservation. And indeed, where conducted without adequate preparation, it can even be harmful to residents. (1)
Beekeeping projects
in the city-when even aimed at profit-making, ‘
nonprofit
‘ or educational-are still about breeding activities. Neither more nor less than can be accomplished with donkeys or horses. And the examples of ‘beekeeping‘ are numerous, from San Francisco to Toronto, Copenhagen, Dublin, London, Sydney, Tokyo, Paris, Detroit, Kampala, Seoul, New York, Amsterdam, Montague, Belfast, Jakarta, and Berlin. The cities, for that matter, offer extraordinary pastures, both in variety and quantity. (2) To prove this, a nice anecdote. At the Sixth National Urban Beekeeping Conference at the Free University of Bozen/Bolzano, one of the leading experts in honey sensory analysis – subjected to ‘blind test‘ (tasting ‘blind’)-appreciated the profusion of aromas characteristic of mountain honeys. In a honey that instead came from a London neighborhood.
The ‘
Greater London
‘ indeed had more than 3,500 hives in 2013. (3) Perhaps too many, according to entomologist Francis Ratnieks, who issued a warning that Italy’s urban beekeepers in turn heeded, in 2017.
‘You can be an urban beekeeper even without raising bees. But rather by helping to produce pastures for pollinators’. Apoidea number in the thousands, from osmias to bumblebees. And everyone in his or her own small way, even in schools, can easily create ‘pastures for bees‘ (from honey and otherwise). Growing flowers and melliferous plants, such as herbs (e.g., sage, thyme, mint, lavender, rosemary) and spices, sunflower and clover. Rather than exotic or alien species (e.g., acacia). An activity certainly simpler than running a beehive, and yet just as valuable.
The scientific community and national beekeeping associations, after all, have reiterated that bees are not tameable animals. Instead-and fortunately-they follow strict habits and behaviors that have evolved over millions of years. They are animals that have developed a practically perfect social system, and their presence in the city, from the standpoint of the human-bee relationship, involves no possibility of influencing their behavior.
Bees live autonomously, provide foraging and reproduce independently. Although there is evidence that they can adapt to urban areas even better than to surrounding rural areas. For these reasons, our relationship with melliferous insects does not produce changes, except for the (sometimes negative) consequences of their exploitation for productive purposes, as may be the case in agriculture. Even if we tried to talk to them for hours, harness them in different enclosures, protect them and even provide them with food the bees would not change their behavior and their relationship with the environment. They are and remain wild animals.
Urban beekeeping and social innovation
What, then, is urban beekeeping and how does it differ from traditional animal husbandry, inside and outside the city? The innovation is not material, the hives are the same, and there is nothing new in appearance. Biomonitoring in turn is neither new nor distinctive. Instead, the real novelty of urban beekeeping lies in the social value of sharing-through networks of knowledgeable and experienced individuals-that aspires to help improve the quality of life for all. The aggregate projects of individual groups of individuals are aimed at the benefit of the community. Stimulating relationships between citizens and the environment, solidarity. And this is how beekeeping is translated into a tool for introducing favorable changes.
‘Urban beekeeping is not just a sector of animal husbandry, but a cultural movement. A constellation of themes and interests, bees to help restore roots to those who have had to emigrate, a creative outlet to those limited by a disability, a positive idea of freedom to those temporarily imprisoned, the pretext for proposing an active and enthusiastic participation of citizens in the preservation of biodiversity, from maintaining urban beehives to cultivating sources of pasture for bees and other apoids.
Sufficiently detached from the need to make income it can realize an advanced form of respect for animal welfare. Tied to the city, which is the center of communication, it can flow into art forms, engage schools and children to discover rhythms and expressions of natural life in the city, promote local food production, and serve to measure the quality of the environment through bees.’
‘
Urban beekeeping as an engine of social innovation.
‘, the thesis produced at Turin Polytechnic ‘Architecture and Industrial Design’ by Cecilia Roella, uses the metaphor of the constellation to better express the biodiversity
– and the need to live in increasingly functional and integrated cities-that this approach promotes. And this is the key to understanding, which goes beyond animal husbandry and honey production, which in turn are archetypes of animal husbandry independent of the concept of urbanity.
Therefore, the priorities of urban beekeeping are different than simply producing honey. As oriented toward the love of nature and beauty, respect for pollinators and their well-being. Recalling that they themselves can feel emotions, (4) experience moments of high stress (Donald Broom, University of Cambridge) and suffer, generating opioid substances, among other things. (5)
Urban beekeeping, the global network for biodiversity
A worldwide network for the promotion and protection of biodiversity will be inaugurated on May 20, 2019 across the planet. We met (Cortese) some of his participants at Terra Madre, every two years, along with urban beekeeping delegates from all over the world. We can review them in the episode of Linea Verde, RAI, 26.11.16. There is no shortage of evidence in Italy:
– a
Turin
, with the ‘Food Community of Urban Beekeepers,’ Noble Park, ‘Bees In Town,’ the University of Turin, and young beekeepers from the local network. Who are dedicated to integrated projects with ‘Metropolitan Gardens,’ to pollinate 17 thousand square meters of urban gardens. As well as to biomonitoring and environmental education programs, in primary and secondary schools,
– in Alexandria, the APS Cambalache Association introduced the revolutionary idea ‘Bee My Job.’ To connect professional beekeepers with immigrants who are former victims of caporalism, who thus learn a splendid trade and become young entrepreneurs,
– a
Milan
, which has boosted urban beekeeping by providing courses and workshops with schools and is distinguished by a web platform
aimed at helping those new to beekeeping,
– in Cremona, where the group ‘Cremona Urban Bees‘ makes an apiary available to citizens and offers beekeeping courses. Strongly desired by the citizenry, it is a common good project born out of the citizens themselves and the need to create moments of aggregation and environmental awareness,
– a
Bologna
, biomonitoring projects are being carried out near the CAAB and soon, with FICO and the University of Bologna, an educational apiary. On 4/13/19 Green Line showed the project of ‘
Beeing
‘
,
– in Cesena, a project involving the city itself is set to join the European ‘Bee Path Net‘ project with other European cities including Barcelona and Ljubljana, a historic capital of human-bee integration,
– in Latina‘Bees in town,’ which has been operational for five years already. While in Rome just these days the first association, ‘Roman Bees,’ was formed. To preside over disadvantaged areas with system projects, together with parent associations, schools, producers,
– in Potenza, the youth of Legambiente, after reclaiming and reclaiming contaminated land, turned it into a social garden and then an apiary. Running it is an ex-convict who began his journey to ‘freedom’ specifically with pollinators,
– and still Segrate, Bolzano, Reggio Emilia, Florence (the next venue for the national conference), Bari, Naples and Palermo are carrying out virtuous projects.
Urban beekeeping, the Italian model
The Italian model of urban beekeeping, through these witnesses and the path they are following, proposes an innovative vision of relationship with nature. If bees and humans were equal, our experience with bees would be richer and more respectful of these animals to whom so much is owed. The contemplate and rejoice in their company without asking or expecting anything else, immersed in a pleasant landscape of living nature. The idea of living together, triggering a mutual reward is called interspecific conviviality.
Paul Faccioli
, in his penultimate book ‘
On the other side of the smoker
‘, it imposes an awareness. The production of 70 percent of our food depends on the activity and well-being of pollinating insects (FAOstat source). But the survival of such species, and so of our own, is tied to a number of factors that impose a drastic choice, as citizens and consumAtors. The system needs to change, to mitigate climate change And reclaim the environment. It is necessary to implement agroecology, eliminate or otherwise drastically reduce both the use of pesticides and the area under monoculture cultivation.
The national network-which will show its new face on 5/20/19-wants to defend a model of beekeeping that can serve cities and citizens. To emphasize that bees are not just honey or ‘radical-chic‘ rooftop tenants but a complex natural system. And each of us should learn to understand this by breaking free from the paradigm of raising bees in the city. Rather, the city should be understood as a place of resilience and innovation. Urban beekeeping is much more than that. And as of today it is open to all, if each of us wants to help defend it or provide pastures of flowers and honey plants.
Guido Cortese and Dario Dongo
Notes
(1) Just think of countless swarms of bees clinging to anthropogenic infrastructures (e.g., the gutters, window sills, dehors, chairs). Where a good beekeeper should try to reduce swarming, if it is even a natural phenomenon. Think of even a single family with foragers coming out of the hive in June, tens of thousands of bees releasing droppings on bed sheets or parking lots. Technique and preparation are essential to prevent and mitigate these phenomena
(2) Cf. Francesca Cirio, ‘GIS and bioindicators: methodology of analysis on the basis of melissopalinological data in urban planning activities in Turin‘ (Turin-Milan Interfaculty thesis in Geographic Information Systems)
(3) Francis Ratnieks (2013). ‘To Bee or Not To Bee‘, The Biologist Vol 60(4) p12-15, http://www.lbka.org.uk/downloads/urban_beekeeping_the_biologist.pdf
(4) ‘Honeybees exhibit a vertebrate-like emotional state‘. See Melissa Bateson, Suzanne Desire, Sarah E. Gartside, Geraldine A.Wright. ‘Agitated Honeybees Exhibit Pessimistic Cognitive Biases’. Curr Biol. 2011 Jun 21; 21(12): 1070-1073. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2011.05.017
(5) ‘
In the honeybee an endogenous opiois system activated by isoppentyl acetate is responsible for modulation of perception for nocipetptive stimuli
‘. See Josuè Nunez, Lourdes Almeida, Norberto Balderrama, Martin Giurfa (1998). ‘
Alarm Pheromone Induces Stress Analgesia via an Opioid System in the Honeybee.
‘. Physiol Behav 63(1) 75-80, 1998. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0031-9384(97)00391-0
Computer scientist and professional beekeeper. A former conscientious objector, he served and then volunteered in a canteen for the homeless in Turin. He deals with the right to food, food policy, food sovereignty and biodiversity. He founded the association of Metropolitan Pollinators with the aim of defending biodiversity through specific projects of social and environmental regeneration. He represents the Slow Food Community of Metropolitan Pollinators. He promoted the birth of the national network of urban beekeepers. He directs an independent agricultural market, collaborates and writes for Egalitè (Onlus Rome) which deals with defending the rights of disadvantaged people, and with the newspapers Great ItalianFood Trade, Qualiformaggio, L'apicoltore Italiano and minor magazines.
Dario Dongo, lawyer and journalist, PhD in international food law, founder of WIISE (FARE - GIFT - Food Times) and Égalité.
