21 June 2024

When Climate Change Meets Too Many Bees

A story whizzing round the internet right now: "Paris rooftop hives produce less bee's knees honey due to climate change." (That's the original grisly wording of the headline.)

Maybe. 

On the other hand, the story includes the remark that "Mugo, a French group of landscape designers, which manages a hundred or so beehives in Paris, has installed four hives on the rooftop of Pernod Ricard near Saint-Lazare train station in Paris." https://www.mugo.fr/

In the wild, honey bee colonies are typically at least 1,000 m apart (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5089168/), and more like 2,000 m on average. That means if the 100 colonies from Mugo in Paris are at 1,000 m separation, they would typically occupy 100 sq km, and at 2,000 m separation would cover 400 sq km.

Paris is about 100 sq km (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris), which means at best Paris is comfortably full of bees, and at worst is 4X overstocked. And that's just Mugo's bees.

Or am I mathematically challenged?






 

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