Online reports – Ecology – Discreet delicacy: The city honey “made in Basel”

© Photos by Monika Jäggi, OnlneReports.ch

“Grown close to my heart”: Beekeeper Seiler, roof of the Gundeldingerfeld in Basel

Urban honey is currently only available through informal channels. But that may change

From Monika Jaeggi

The street noise roars below and the bees buzz above: there are many more beekeepers active in Basel than previously thought. The city still offers an optimal ecological environment for bees. Amazingly, the niche product of city honey is of excellent quality. A report on the search for bees in gardens and on roofs in Basel.

To get straight to the point: While researching this article, I was stung by a bee – on the flat roof of the Gundelingerfeld, where beekeeper Andreas Seiler was showing me his two bee colonies. It was clearly my lack of knowledge of the situation. To take a photo, I went close to the beehive and was initially standing in the direction the bees were flying. Although it was already evening, the bees were still flying in and out. They were collecting nectar – their winter supply – on the Gundeldingerfeld area (picture above) and on the nearby Bruderholz.

“The bee stung me for that,” explains Andreas Seiler. “It was defending its honey.” The bee colonies needed the nectar collected in late summer as food to survive the winter. The beekeeper does not extract the honey until the end of July; what is collected after that belongs to the bees. A bee colony needs up to 18 kilograms of honey as a food reserve to keep warm in winter and to be fit for the start of breeding in February of the new year. When I visited Seiler's three other bee colonies on a garage roof near Schützenmatt Park, I learned my lesson: Do not stand in the direction of the bees' flight and keep a respectful distance from the beehive.

Great diversity, different flowering times

Urban populations still associate beekeeping with the rural environment. But amazingly, cities are now more suitable as a habitat for bees than the countryside. Examples from Paris or New York show what is possible in urban beekeeping. In these and other cities, honey “Made in Paris” or “Made in New York” is a popular gourmet product that is sold at high prices.

What do bees like about cities? The city is an ideal habitat for bees because of the variety of plants and the different flowering times. From spring to autumn, bees can always find a flower in the city that entices them to nibble on nectar.

Basel has bee paradises

Do bees like Basel too? The city of Basel is “ideal for bees,” say several beekeepers interviewed by OnlineReports. In total, there are between 500 and 1,000 bee colonies in the Basel area, which find a rich supply of pollen. There are many green habitats on the Rhine bend, such as the city gardens, but also the family gardens and the private gardens in the back and inner courtyards. Due to the varied vegetation in the city, the Food stress for the bees is less. The city with its ecological niches also contrasts with the agricultural areas that have been cleared and treated with pesticides, fungicides and insecticides.

The best areas for keeping honey bees in Basel are the areas near Schützenmattpark, Kannenfeldpark and the area around the Milchsuppe family gardens. But areas in Kleinbasel also offer a good supply of nectar. Near the Rhine are the linden tree avenues in particular, which are attractive as a source of food for city bees; along Feldbergstrasse there are the wisterias planned on the walls of houses.

Other good locations are St. Peter's Square with the Botanical Garden as a source of food or Basel Zoo. The pollen supply varies from district to district. For example, the Natural History Museum is not very suitable as a location for honey bees, as Matthias Lehnherr, caretaker of an observation beehive in the museum, points out. However, he notes that the food supply for the bees in the districts is increasing because the private city gardens are no longer as well maintained and are more likely to become overgrown.

The warmer the more productive

City heat also boosts the productivity of bees. Since the climate in the city is a few degrees warmer than in the surrounding countryside, and worker bees only fly out at temperatures of 8 degrees, the bees' working hours and thus their productivity are greater in the city. They fly longer during the day and start looking for nectar earlier in the spring. For example: This year, Andreas Seiler has already been able to collect 50 kilograms of honey from his two privately kept colonies. In a good season, he hopes, he will be able to produce (or have produced) up to 100 kilograms of honey per hive, while beekeepers in the countryside can enjoy 15 to 20 kilograms.

Beekeeper Roland Baumann, who looks after three bee colonies on the roof of the Leonhard school in Basel, as well as beehives in Ziefen, confirms this trend: last year he harvested five kilograms of honey per colony in Ziefen and around 25 kilograms per colony in Basel. The bees in the city therefore produced significantly more honey than in rural areas.

Unfounded fear of bees

Andreas Seiler believes it is important to raise public awareness of the ecological importance of urban bees. He is also concerned with removing city dwellers' fear and prejudices about bees. This fear is latent, which is also reflected in the difficulty of finding locations for bee colonies in urban public spaces. Bees are flower-resistant. Once they have discovered a source, the workers stay until the plants have finished flowering. But they are not interested in people, unless the busy bees feel attacked. Andreas Seiler is convinced that information and good honey will arouse the public's interest in wealth.

Urs Löhnert, a beekeeper from the Milchsuppe family garden area, is also convinced of this. The understanding of bees in the family garden is no longer so great, but the fear of bee stings is all the greater. Nowadays, more and more younger families are renting the gardens; there has been a generational change. The older tenants grew up with bees, younger people had little experience with them, that is his conclusion.

City has a positive influence

As soon as friends and acquaintances hear about urban beekeeping, they are interested, but most are surprised, says Seiler. The prejudice is that urban honey is unhealthy or even contaminated. All sorts of things come to mind when urban people think of urban honey – the exhaust fumes, the heavy metals. Isn't all of that reflected in the honey?

The opinions of the beekeepers surveyed are divided here. Some swear that Basel honey is one of the best in Switzerland in terms of quality due to the lower levels of harmful environmental influences in the city gardens to which the nectar is exposed. Others would not agree so categorically, as there is still no real comparison between the pollutant content in city and country honey. It is a complex process that needs to be investigated.

A study published this year by the Agricultural Research Institute in Avignon confirmed for the first time the connection between a diverse pollen diet, which is increasingly found in urban areas, and an improved immune system in honey bees. This supports the assumption of some Basel beekeepers that city bees are less weakened than country bees due to the positive natural conditions they find in urban areas.

Bees as a school project

In Basel, beekeeping is successful on a private basis. The city honey is mainly given away or sold under the table to friends and acquaintances. Urs Löhnert, for example, hangs a sign on the wall of his house to draw passers-by's attention to the honey. The honey from the Leonhard school (pictured), on the other hand, is only sold internally to the teachers; for the students, the bees are a visual lesson. However, it would be “great”, says Roland Baumann, if Students are dealing with bees and the urban habitat in a final year project. After all, they are the new generation of beekeepers.

Back in Gundeldingerfeld. The city dweller climbs onto the roof once or twice a day to check on his bees. They are young colonies that have been there since mid-June this year. You can hear his enthusiasm for his useful insects. “I've grown fond of them, I need to know that they're doing well,” he explains. Andreas Seiler is not only a beekeeper, he is also a chef in the organic bistro in Gundeldingerfeld. He is already using this year's honey, which the bees produced on the flat roof in his backyard, for marinades and desserts.

Label “Made in Basel”

However, the beekeeper would like to make the honey from the Gundeldinger district a little more well-known. Starting next year, the bees on the roof of the Gundeldingerfeld, which have become a commercial colony, will produce enough honey so that he can sell it in the bistro, labelled with the specially created “StadtHonig” label.

In this way, Seiler will also raise awareness among the general public of the larger context in nature and the importance of bees in it. The beekeeper is therefore actively looking for additional locations for bee colonies – right in the city center.

This idea could also be interesting for Basel's gastronomy. What could be better than selling Basel honey as a gourmet product and at the same time promoting Basel as a place to live? A local product, made in Basel, sold in Basel. A bee city development, so to speak.

Further information: www.bienenbeiderbasel.ch

27 September 2010

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