Feature: Italy's design capital Milan becomes sweet home for bees

For Italians who love nature but do not want to give up their city life, urban apiculture in public parks or apartment balconies has become something of a trend in design capital Milan.

Next month, over a course of five lessons, future urban beekeepers will learn about the world of bees and how to manage a beehive.

They will be taught how to distinguish bees from wasps, current safety regulations and the steps for extracting honey, as well as how to respect the coexistence rules necessary in coming close to bees, which are not attackers but defend their space and honey.

"We wanted to improve the environment of our city, also in line with the world exposition held last year in Milan and dedicated to healthy nutrition," Claudia Zanfi, director of the international project Green Island, organizer of the course along with environmental group Legambiente, told Xinhua.

During the six-month expo, Green Island collaborated with local institutions to sensitize citizens, and invited international artists and local artisans to design and build beehive creations. "At the same time, we revitalized some abandoned public areas as a suitable ambience where bees can thrive in an urban context," she said.

As a result, Milan has become the first "design urban apiary" in the world, Zanfi stressed. "We have already placed 12 beehives in public areas around the city, and plan to add three new ones every year. Each beehive is different from others, each of them is a unique works of art," she said. "Everybody can adopt urban beehives. A citizen and a company have adopted two so far," she added.

In order to "adopt a beehive" you have to pay an annual fee of around 300 euros (about 328 U.S. dollars) for maintenance costs and, under the right conditions, urban bees would be able to procure you up to 10 kg of honey per year.

Zanfi, also a visiting professor at Visual Art Department of Middlesex University, UK, explained to Xinhua that each beehive could host 30,000-40,000 bees, also a very important instrument for monitoring air quality. "Bees are particularly sensitive to pollutants. Their health condition tells whether the air quality is good," she said.

She noted that some 70 percent of the fruit and vegetables that grow in nature depend on bee pollination. "But bees have always populated our cities too. They have a flight range of about 8 km, and the more the environment around them is healthy, with no pesticides but plants and flowers grown with natural methods, the more they will enjoy our balconies and gardens," she said.

Andrea Paternoster is a renowned beekeeper. "Any thing which has a link with nature can be only positive," he told Xinhua, welcoming the initiative. "Those citizens who come close to bees, a highly evolved animal, are doing a good thing for themselves and for the city as well," he said.

Paternoster explained to Xinhua that the role of bees is fundamental for cities, where a variety of plants and flowers grow and need bees. "Sometimes we just do not pay attention to the incredible floral diversity of our metropolises," he noted. In fact the new hobby of Milan follows on the heels of other urban apiculture trends around the world.

Paternoster, owner of Mieli Thun honey products family company, lives in Ton, a small town in mountainous northern Italy, which counts around 800 inhabitants and millions of bees, a "paradise" for his small friends. Yet, he also appreciates urban honey which, he explained to Xinhua, has never shown traces of pollution when analyzed.

"Through predigesting it, bees make the honey pure," he highlighted. "I personally like urban honeys very much, because of their strong linden flavor due to the high presence of lindens in urban areas," he said.

So urban honeys are usually multi-flower with linden accent, tasty indeed, said the honey lover, who has tried urban honeys from big cities of the world such as New York, Chicago and Paris. "Honey is always a gift of nature. It has the same sugar composition of fruit, can be consumed in infinite ways and is a real treasure for health," Paternoster concluded. Enditem