Oh, I shouldn't yell, should I yell?
- [Noah] You can yell, it's all good.
- There's so many bees on this hive.
One in three bites of food we eat
we owe to the pollination work of bees.
But, due to threats like habitat loss,
chemical pesticides, and disease,
However, not all hope is lost.
And cities can play a part in bringing back the bees.
So I wanna know, can urban beekeeping save the bees?
To find out, I'm gonna visit the Best Bees
rooftop apiary, here in New York.
- [Noah] We've got all of this empty rooftop space,
so we've gotta be smarter about this.
- [Lucy] Then, I'll connect with Detroit Hives,
a nonprofit that has used beekeeping
to revitalize their neighborhood.
- It's about giving back to your communities,
but also challenging yourself to learn something new,
learn about pollinators.
- [Lucy] And finally, I'll see how
Best Bees processes their honey.
I'm Lucy Biggers, and this is "One Small Step".
(upbeat music)
We've come to the top of a Lower Manhattan
apartment building, where Best Bees
runs beehives for their customers.
How long have you been beekeeping for?
- [Noah] I've been beekeeping for about 15 years now,
and I love it.
I think it's kinda like maybe the eye of a hurricane,
in the middle of a storm, it's just peaceful.
How do you feel?
- [Lucy] I feel great.
I feel very safe, and I can't wait to check out the bees.
- [Noah] Let's do this.
- [Lucy] All right, let's do it.
Noah Wilson-Rich has his PhD
in honeybee behavior immunology,
and was inspired to start Best Bees 10 years ago.
- [Noah] Bees started dying en masse.
And the New York Times was covering it.
And the bees were vanishing.
So I started a Facebook page, called it Best Bees.
I said, we're installing beehives,
and I'll volunteer my time to manage them
in exchange for research funding.
10 years later, we're the biggest
beekeeping service in the country.
We've created over 200 jobs for beekeepers.
We've got a thousand beehives on rooftops like this.
- [Lucy] Office buildings and apartment complexes
across 13 cities have opened their roofs to Best Bees,
which then processes the honey
and gives it to tenants for free.
Noah is motivated by the research the hives provide.
- [Noah] This is one species
of 200,000 species of pollinators.
We can't possibly study all of those pollinators,
so we use bees as an indicator species.
We think if we do what's good for honeybees,
that will also help the other pollinators too.
If you do one thing, like have a green rooftop,
or you have a garden, that's really gonna help pollinators,
and that'll bring us food all around the world
- [Lucy] My assumption would be that the bees
wouldn't like the city, but it sounds like I'm really wrong.
- [Noah] So we're seeing the data,
bees are dying everywhere,
but they're doing better in cities.
They make more honey in cities,
and they tend to live longer as a beehive.
So far, our research has found that
there are more flowers in cities.
More flower diversity can mean better nutrition for bees,
versus in farmland where there's only
one crop growing on farms these days.
That's like if we ate pizza every day,
our nutrition would take a hit.
- [Lucy] So my rooftop flowers on my deck
actually are helping bees,
and these ones could be coming and pollinating?
- [Noah] Absolutely!
And this is such a beautiful story
because people of any age, any ability,
can go out and plant flowers.
(upbeat music)
So let's open this up.
- [Lucy] Okay, let's do it.
- [Noah] I'm gonna give you the hive tool.
- [Lucy] Okay.
- [Noah] So just shim this right in between here.
- Oh, shoot. - Awesome.
- Am I gonna agitate them? - No.
So within each box here, we have 10 frames,
and the frames are hanging down,
and this is what the bees build their honeycomb on.
- They live in this hive? - Yeah, year-round.
- [Lucy] How many?
- [Noah] It can be maybe 10 to 30,000 bees in the spring,
and then get up to maybe 80,000 bees in the summer.
- [Lucy] So they're taking the nectar
and then putting it in here?
- [Noah] So this is all honey once it's capped.
This beeswax on the top is cosmetics-grade,
so you can make lip balms, or face lotions,
or candles, or anything with this stuff.
And then the bees here, they just fill this up with honey.
Check this out. - Cool.
- [Noah] You can eat it warm out of the beehive.
Honey is the only food that doesn't spoil.
You can eat it fresh.
You don't need a food permit.
And these bees are such great team workers that look,
from that little indentation I made,
they're already repairing that damage to their nest.
Can I challenge you to hold this?
- [Lucy] Sure, I can hold it.
- [Noah] Two hands.
Each of the bunny ears there.
So when we do beehives on rooftops of apartment buildings,
of offices, the tenants get all the honey.
With Best Bees, we don't sell honey
because we help people make their own.
- But it's not just New York getting in the bee game.
In Detroit, partner's Timothy Jackson and Nicole Lindsey
have used beekeeping to revitalize their community.
- At the time we had well over 90,000 vacant lots,
and they were causing some problems
in our community around blight.
So, Nicole and I figured we can do something to give back.
After all, the vacant lots were going for
just as little as a hundred dollars.
- [Lucy] They were drawn to bees for the health benefits
of local honey, which helped cure Timothy of a cold.
Since 2016, they've made bees their life,
revitalizing four lots in Detroit.
- We pitched this idea to a local crowd funding campaign.
We won $1600.
And now with that $1600,
we had enough money to buy that property,
to take courses, to purchase our first bees,
to create community events centered around that project,
and to sustain it for that year.
- It sounds like it's an educational tool
for people to really learn about bees.
If you're living in the city,
you might not even know what they are.
You might be afraid of them.
- That's exactly how we started.
Nicole was never a outside person.
- No.
- And I for sure wasn't an outside person.
I'm always inside, I'm a creative.
So, we always had a fear of what we thought were bees,
which was actually wasps.
Once we became educated, certified beekeepers,
that fear transformed into love.
And these vacant lots are filled with so many weeds.
Most people think weeds are a bad thing,
but here at Detroit Hives, we believe
weeds is the bees knees. - Weeds is the bees knees.
- What we mean by that is that these weeds
are actually wild flowers, native wild flowers.
So it's really important for communities
to have local food sources,
the same thing as our honeybee colonies.
They are too in need of local food sources as well.
- Yeah, and let's not forget our native bees as well.
Because our native bees don't fly as far.
And so they need those sources very extremely local to them.
- What's one small step that people can take
to protect the bees?
- So bees get thirsty while they're out
foraging for nectar and pollen.
And so we tell people, hey,
you can set out either a Frisbee, a shallow bowl.
Place rocks, or pebbles, or marbles in there
because they are great fliers,
but they're not great swimmers.
And so you need those little pebbles or rocks
for them to land on so they can have a drink of water.
And that's something that everybody can do,
and that they can place near their garden.
- [Lucy] So, what's so special about the honey?
To find out we've come to Queens,
where Best Bees processes theirs.
- [Noah] There you go.
Awesome. - Oh my God.
- Wow, look at the color. - This is dark.
- Yeah, so. - So this is fall?
- [Noah] Exactly, so we know from the northeast
that dark honey is fall honey, look how dark this is.
It might look kind of gross, but it's not at all, right.
So bring it over here and what I'm gonna show you--
- [Lucy] It might look kind of gross, but it's not at all.
- [Noah] It's almost alien-like, you know?
- [Lucy] It is kinda freaky looking.
- [Noah] I mean, this is food from insects.
It's like, it's weird, but it's magical, and it's healthy.
So let's take this one, this frame, it's really dark here.
We know that the wax that's on top,
that's the cosmetics grade, that's the good stuff.
So this is called an uncapping tool.
So all you do with this is you just
try to take the top layer of beeswax off.
So all we're gonna do is just kind of, again,
no wrong way to do it.
And we'll scrape that honey into here.
The top, the wax, exactly.
We'll scrape the top level of wax.
- [Lucy] This looks hard.
- [Noah] It just requires some good muscles.
We just try to get that top layer off.
You try to skim the top.
- [Lucy] Oh, I think I'm going, am I going too deep?
- [Noah] You're good, you're good.
Perfect. - Oh, oh!
- [Noah] It's super forgiving because the bees
will actually just repair it all.
- [Lucy] Wow.
- [Noah] We can put this back in the beehive.
- [Lucy] I heard that there's medicinal values to honey.
What, is there any truth to that?
What is that? - Totally.
So we know that in addition to benefiting
allergy sufferers with honey,
it also helps with wound healing,
and it has antimicrobial properties to prevent infection,
and promote wound healing. - That's amazing!
- [Noah] For throat ailments, honey has actually
been proven to be better than cough syrup.
So why don't I hold this here
and then just load 'em in here.
You see there's three slots.
I can show you how, if you would like, but.
- [Lucy] Do I just do that?
- [Noah] Yup, perfect.
- [Lucy] You're really making me
feel like I'm a natural beekeeper.
- [Noah] You know, Lucy, you are a natural.
And what's really cool, it's not just you personally,
but it's the human experience.
So this is-- - Oh sorry.
I'm getting it on you.
- Awesome.
- Okay, I'm gonna go. - Go for it.
- [Lucy] So I'm spinning it and I can see
all the honey is like getting, flowing out of the,
of the spinning contraption,
and it's hitting the wall of this container.
It's like getting sprayed,
sort of like a salad spinner.
I'm gonna try it. - There you go, yeah.
- It comes out fast.
Can I just drink it?
Oh, can I just drink?
I was just gonna drink, I was just gonna take a shot of it.
(upbeat music)
Wow!
It's so good.
This is the elixir of life.
It's so wild because this tastes so good,
so rich, so healthy for you.
And you'd never think that a city as crazy
and dirty as New York can taste this good.
You'd think this would be from like a precious organic farm,
and it's from the city.
It's so cool.
- [Noah] And it's a new way to experience where you live.
- There are a lot of ways that you can help bees
without becoming a beekeeper.
So here's what you can do.
First, plant native plants
so that bees have more flowers to pollinate.
Second, stop using pesticides because they harm bees
and are a known carcinogen to humans.
And third, buy locally sourced honey.
That's all for this episode.
Thank you so much for watching.
And we'll see you next time.
Bye.
You guys need to try this.
You guys are gonna try some, right?
Okay, good. (Lucy laughing)
It's so good! - It is.
- Oh my gosh, okay.
- It's still warm from the hive.