Harvesting honey from the rooftop hives of New York Metropolis residential high-rises akin to The Solaire … [+]
It hasn’t been too lengthy for the reason that world reeled on the first information of existential threats to bees and different pollinators.
Addressing the issue by cultivating bees and beehives began as a pandemic-era ardour, and has since generated plenty of buzz throughout North America, from main company employers in Denver to residential high-rise rooftops in New York Metropolis, to the higher reaches of the Metro Toronto Conference Centre.
However how many individuals guessed initially that beekeeping could be an exercise to deliver colleagues, residents, guests and others collectively? Given humankind’s eager curiosity in nature, it wasn’t an enormous leap to see individuals pulling collectively to make sure hives thrive, serving to delay the day the world’s meals provide could be positioned in peril by bees’ demise.
In choose sustainability-focused New York Metropolis residential excessive rises, cultivation of bees and different pollinators appears yet one more option to embrace biophilia, the incorporation of nature into the constructed setting. Manhattan bees and butterflies at the moment are saved busy pollinating flowers, crops and timber, serving to spur biodiversity, strengthen the ecosystem and as a facet profit, spurring honey manufacturing.
The Solaire, Battery Park Metropolis
Some 20,000 bees inhabit a pair of beehives on the roof of The Solaire. Overlooking the Hudson Riverfront with direct entry to 2 parks, The Solaire was the primary LEED gold high-rise residence within the U.S. Final yr, the bees generated 56.2 kilos of honey, a lot of which was packed in jars, and given to potential constructing condominium consumers.
The constructing’s dedication to the setting couldn’t have harm in The Solaire etching its place among the many best-selling new Manhattan developments of this yr.
“The Solaire is dedicated to fostering sustainable practices within the constructing,” says Aaron Goed, director of gross sales for the constructing’s unique advertising and gross sales consultant, Corcoran Sunshine.
“And the introduction of a rooftop apiary 5 years in the past has been a enjoyable and artistic option to work together with our Battery Park ecosystem. Greatest Bees manages and harvests honey from the handcrafted rooftop apiary so we can provide jars of our personal honey to potential consumers on the constructing, who respect the private contact and the distinctive connection to our surrounding inexperienced areas within the neighborhood.”
The Starrett-Lehigh Constructing, West Chelsea
The RXR-owned construction provides a rooftop city farm the place bees flit amongst perennial flowers and bushes that embrace echinacea, Buddleia and Joe Pye weed. The farm’s beehives are maintained by a workforce of volunteers drawn from the constructing’s tenants. The volunteers monitor their bees by means of a portal created by beekeeping agency Alveole, which claims a “bee portfolio” of greater than 116 million bees.
This system’s success at The Starrett-Lehigh Constructing has swayed RXR to increase its New York Metropolis beekeeping operations to its properties at Pier57, 230 Park, 32 Previous Slip and 75 Rockefeller.
11 Hoyt, Brooklyn
This Jeanne Gang-designed property options an elevated, 27,000-square-foot non-public park with a number of flower gardens that appeal to not solely bees, however different important pollinators. Among the many latter are Monarch butterflies, that are lured throughout their annual migration throughout New York Metropolis, and are celebrated in a butterfly-theme kids’s playground.
Helena 57 West, Manhattan
New York Metropolis’s first LEED Gold residential constructing, Helena 57 West lives as much as its stature in areas starting from air high quality and filtration to the close to elimination of fabric chemical emissions. Among the many different sustainability-focused initiatives of the Dunst Group luxurious property is a 5,000-square-foot rooftop park that’s residence to seven hives. Harvested honey is bottled in jars and given to new residents in Helena 57 West and the adjoining Dunst property, VIA 57 West, the place the work of the proximate busy bees has turn out to be a resident bragging proper.
