Prep4 · Passage 1 · Urban beekeeping

Practice: READING

Over the past decade, beekeeping has moved from rural farms into city rooftops. Urban beekeepers argue that cities can actually offer bees a more varied diet than intensively farmed countryside, since gardens and street trees flower at different times throughout the year. Councils in several major cities now issue permits for rooftop hives, though most require beekeepers to complete a short training course first, largely to reduce the risk of bees swarming in densely populated areas. Critics note that the trend has grown faster than the research supporting it: while individual urban hives often report higher honey yields than expected, there is limited evidence so far on whether large numbers of hives in one district compete with wild pollinators for the same limited flowers.