City bees

Keen to try your hand at beekeeping? It might be possible to do so in your city apartment with Philips's Urban Beehive concept.

Bees are an important part of the ecosystem but the sad reality is that bee colonies are on the decline. Bearing this in mind, as well as the ever-growing trend towards urbanisation, electronics company Philips conceptualised the Urban Beehive.

The Urban Beehive is an attempt at promoting bee preservation by making it possible to keep a beehive on the third floor of an apartment in the middle of a city, for example.

Part of Philips’s Microbial Home project, the Urban Beehive consists of an outside flower pot with an entryway for the bees just above it. A transparent container full of honeycomb frames can be found on the inside, to try and lure the bees inside. Philip further explains: “The glass shell filters light to let through the orange wavelength which bees use for sight. The frames are provided with a honeycomb texture for bees to build their wax cells on.”

The Urban Beehive comes with a smoke actuator at the bottom of the bees, so that the urban beekeeper is able to calm the bees before removing the cover of the hive to get to the honey.

It’s designed to be hung up on a wall, which really does make this hive ideal for the urban environment.