World Bee Day: in Vienna, hotels and museums host beehives on the roofs
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For years, Vienna has stood out in the rankings that reward the most livable cities in the world, and the recognition is also due to the green areas that it continues to increase. There are more and more carefully thought out parks, gardens and flowerbeds, and if this delights the citizens, it also delights the bees who find an ideal habitat to live in the Austrian capital. Defining Vienna “European capital of bees” is not a gamble, it is not a tourist office claim. Because Vienna is truly a city for bees, for lovers of these insects, and for those who are committed to their defense in the ecosystem.
On the other hand, the Austrian capital’s love for bees has a long history, it was none other than the Empress Maria Theresa who in 1769 founded the first beekeeping school in the world in Vienna. Even today in the Augarten gardens you can see the commemorative plaque in honor of Anton Janša, master beekeeper of the court and director of that school. The Viennese love of bees makes no distinction between honey bees and wild ones. The former are the protagonists of about 6,000 colonies, lovingly cared for by over 700 urban beekeepers gathered in various associations, such as Thomas Zelenka which has its hives on the roof of the Kunsthistorisches Museum (Museum of Art History), one of the most famous museums in the world. Zelenka bees also live on the roof of theUniversity of Vienna and of Kunsthaus Wien, the most sustainable museum in the city, with a green roof and facade from which a lot of vegetation emerges, which offer the industrious insects ideal conditions for foraging. There are also beehives on other prestigious roofs, from that of the town hall, the Rathausto those of theState work, of the Secession and of the Münze Österreich, the Austrian mint. By the way, the honey produced by the bees of the institution that mints the Austrian coin has been sympathetically named “Liquid Gold” (Flüssiges Gold), and is on sale in the mint shop.
Following the example of Paris and New York, which were pioneering cities in this sense – as explained by the Mantuan honey philosopher Fausto Delegà who has lived in Vienna since 2005 taking care of his own bees and the Landschafthonig project, local honey – there are also apiaries on roofs of several hotels such as the InterContinental, the Daniel and the 25hours Hotel Wien, which then use the honey produced for their restaurants. And they are always different honeys, as underlined by the urban beekeepers of the Wiener Bezirksimkerei (Vienna district beekeeping), who team up with their “buzzing employees” to produce 23 types of honey, one for each district of the city, thanks to apiaries also located on the roofs of public buildings, or in the courtyards of private houses.
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“Each district – they say – offers the bees different sources of pollen, different blooms, and their variety gives the honey of each district a particular, unique flavour”. The pollens are also those of the blooms specifically dedicated to bees in the green spaces of the city, as Fausto Delegà recounts: “Vienna works continuously on the theme of the well-being of bees, for example by making available to these insects more and more flower beds with blooms suitable for foraging, therefore not flowerbeds designed in terms of urban furniture but essences useful to bees.”
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And, adds the bee-lover who also deals with dissemination in this sector, and who has had his “buzzing girls” at the Prater for a long time, all the Viennese green is treated in a biological way to ensure the best environment for people , animals and insects, including bees. Also at wild beesThe hymenoptera which are most threatened with extinction by human behavior, the climate crisis, the destruction of their habitat and the spread of pathogens and parasites. Vienna for wild (or solitary) bees it is a safe house where numerous targeted measures are put in place to protect them: from the installation of “hotels” where they can lay their eggs to the decision to only rarely mow the meadows made available to them as “pastures” where they find food and hiding places and thus ensuring the existence of biodiversity. And these measures appear to be effective: According to a study conducted a few years ago, there are 456 wild bee species in Vienna, an impressive number for a large city.
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