To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video

It’s estimated that humans could survive for only four years if bees were to disappear from our planet.

Four years.

And at the current rate of wildlife extinction levels – estimated to be around 10,000 species a year – the possibility of a world minus our hard-working honey producers and pollinators is an ever-increasing possibility.


Urban bees, surprisingly, on the other hand, are doing rather well.

London, even more ironically, is the place to be… if you’re a bee.

‘In fact, London has a higher density of honey bees than anywhere else in the country’, says Tristam Sutton, apiary manager and beekeeping association trustee, speaking from Walworth Garden at Kennington, south London.



‘It’s a misconception that cities are bad for bees,’ he says. ‘Ironically, urban environments with parks and gardens provide a very good habitat for honeybees.

‘The difficulty in London is ensuring the forage areas are kept free from buildings to ensure the bees have areas to find food.

‘That includes the way in which open spaces are managed, and what types of flowers are planted.’

A very innovative beehive home has been created by James Reed, owner of the UK firm Reed Recruitment.

At his central London base at Covent Garden, he and his wife, Nicola, have installed a hive on the rooftop balcony – only metres away from James’s desk and within easy viewing of his hundreds of London staff.

‘When we first brought bees to the office, a few people looked concerned and a couple of people confessed they had a long-standing fear of bees,’ said James.

‘But things have improved as the bees have settled in. As long as the bees don’t swarm in through the office window one afternoon then we should be fine.

‘They’re very interesting to look at. You can sit and watch them going to work and it’s quite fascinating.’

‘It’s crucial that we encourage bees and look after them,’ said Nicola, an avid beekeeper who has guided her husband James through his rooftop bee installation.

‘They’re the only insect that provides food that we can eat and we benefit from.’

James is pleased to bring bees back to Covent Garden, to a place he says was once ‘full of flowers’.

‘Covent Garden is the site of the old Convent Garden that was once attached to Westminster Abbey,’ he says. ‘It seems entirely right that our bees should make it their home.’

The work ethic and hierarchy of bees are quite extraordinary, which makes it even more appropriate that a recruitment agency leader has become a bee champion.

The life of a bee The workers provide the most interesting career progression. They start working as soon as they hatch, fully formed. They start by producing wax, feeding other bees, feeding the Queen (she doesn’t feed herself), grooming, and also cleaning out the cells after new bees have been born. A lot of the work they do when they are younger revolves around housekeeping. Then, as they grow older, their roles evolve and they carry them out closer and closer to the entrance of the hive. A role collecting pollen and nectar from foragers and storing that in the cells for the colony to live off follows the housekeeping role. Then, close yet to the entrance, they will become guard bees. Finally, they end their career by becoming foragers. The new foragers fly off to get pollen then return to do their famous waggle dance, which communicates a message to the hive about food and its location outside.

Tristram Sutton, ensuring the bee colony is doing well at Walworth Garden, Kennington

So, bees are doing well in London.

However, the same happy bee scenario can not be seen in many parts of the UK and beyond.

Colony collapse – the dying of thousands of bees that typically make up one hive – has been reported across vast swathes of America and, to a lesser degree, parts of mainland Europe.



One of the leading causes of colony collapse is the use of pesticides. Farmers use potent chemical mixes, often containing neonicotinoids – nerve-agent chemicals that damage insects’ immune systems, making it harder for them to fight off fungal, parasitic, viral, and bacterial infections.

If the nervous system in bees is disrupted, it can cause problems foraging. Hives under environmental stress also respond by sending out their younger, inexperienced worker bees to forage for food, making them more likely to die prematurely.

Without foragers to bring pollen back to the hive, the colony cannot survive, leading to a loss of approximately 30,000 bees per hive.

Nicola and James Reed tend to the beehive on the balcony of Reed Recruitment, based at Covent Garden

This is devastating for many reasons. Not only is it losing us a complex piece of wildlife, which is fascinating once you understand the life cycle and culture of a hive, it also means – from an entirely selfish, human perspective (which, after all, motivates most of our practices and politics) – that we lose out on huge volumes of food.

Bees provide pollination for 70% of commercial crops across the world.

So – can you put a price on a bee?

Well, this is what the United Nations report did in 2010 when it claimed that bees are worth £134 billion.

Real value isn’t found in money, of course.

A healthy ecosystem is one in which things are balanced.

London is a landscape which can appear harsh for wildlife, yet it’s proved to be a safe harbour for bee populations.

How we maintain this bee-friendly ecosystem, in a city which is constantly constructing on any spare ground, is another challenge.


But with a clock that gives us a mere four years of survival after the disappearance of bees, it’s not one we can afford to lose.

Bee colony at Reed Recruitment is doing well thanks to Covent Garden flowers, rooftop gardens and nearby parks

How can we help bees? ‘Plant for pollinators, and don’t manage the open spaces so they are effectively green deserts (such as mowing park grass too closely, leading to loss of foraging ground for bees),’ said Tristram Sutton. ‘Those green deserts don’t support insect population.’ ‘We’re trying to give them new habitats to grow and prosper in’, concludes James. It’s for the future of our own species, as much as for the bees. Aiding the life of a bee: keep wild spaces in urban centres

ensure a wild flower mix is used in gardens, parks and flower beds

avoid spraying potent mixes of chemicals on plants

plant vegetable and fruit plants

plant herbs, such as Rosemary and Thyme

avoid synthetic grass, this does nothing to aid any wildlife

MORE: Hive for 1,500 bees built in middle of city