Extrait de VSD: en savoir plus
David Graves, 59 ans, il à 14 ruches dans New York. Pour lui, la loi ne doit pas changer car elle permet de réglementer l’apiculture. Les risques d’essaimage sont important et seul les apiculteurs professionnels devraient être autorisé à New York. David est apiculteur professionnel même si son cheptel ne dépasse pas les 50 ruches. Avec sa femme, ils font de la confiture et de gelée de fruits.
Eurobeestock: ruches en ville pour particuliers
Apiterra: ruches en entreprises
A Strasbourg, une trentaire de parrains, particuliers, collectivités et entreprises ont décidé de parrainer des ruches pour agir pour la sauvegardes des abeilles.
Rooftop hives have been thought of as a novel curiosity — a last refuge for beekeepers without two square feet of terra firma. Perhaps so, but rooftop apiaries are proving to have advantages over their country cousins. And, in the way that the hobby of rooftop pigeon raising came to play a crucial role in World War II, rooftop beekeeping is becoming part of the struggle to sustain bees and the environment. The bees are down, and interest in local food is up; urban agriculture is creating value for both city bees and pollinated city gardens. Cities have diverse forage over a long growing season, allowing bees to gather the variety of pollens that they need. Unlike agricultural mono-crops, cityscapes can provide the range of nutrients required for the development of winter bees. And city window boxes and small garden plots are less likely to be sprayed with pesticides. Tests of French honey found fewer chemical traces in city honey than in some from rural areas. Some rooftop beekeepers say that their bees fly longer in the day than those in the countryside. A fair guess as to how that could be true is that streets and roofs provide a heat sink, making cities as much. Rooftop beekeepers, particularly those on historic buildings, are selling their honey above boutique prices. Some apiaries enhance commercial ventures, and others involve their communities by providing revenue, education, and fun. Others simply provide fascination and pleasure for their keepers. The most famous modern rooftop bees are those in the heart of Paris, high above the marble façade of the Palais Garnier, the Paris opera house. More than 25 years ago, Jean Paucton, who worked in props, stowed a hive on the roof until he could move it to the country. To his surprise, his hive filled quickly with honey. The bees had abundant forage from the chestnut trees on the Champs Elysées, the linden (basswood) trees of the Palais Royal, dozens of species from the presidential palace gardens and flower-filled balconies — all the way to the Tuilleries Gardens and the 116 acres of the Père-Lachaise cemetery. From April to October there is something in bloom — a wider range of plants than a comparable area in the countryside, which in agricultural areas is heavily sprayed. Paucton knows of two dozen or so rooftop beekeepers now thriving in Paris. Perhaps they are remnants of the custom dating back to the Industrial Revolution, when Europeans migrated to cities to find work and brought their bees along. As Paucton’s legend grows, he is said to suit up and climb to the opera rooftop three times a week at lunch-time to smoke his bees – although none but a novice beekeeper would be so intrusive. Paucton knows his craft, which he learned at the rucher école, hive school, at the Jardin du Luxembourg where beekeeping has been taught since 1856. André Lemaire, a beekeeping instructor at the Jardin du Luxembourg, says of the city bees: “They can go to work earlier in the morning and return later at night,” and are two to three times more productive than their rural kin. That may account for Paucton’s harvest, which he says is over 200 pounds of honey from each of his five hives. Even at that, he cannot keep up with the demand for his intensely floral “Opera Honey,” which is sold in the opera shop and the famous food emporium Fauchon’s at US$12 for a 125 gram jar — less than 4.5 ounces (which comes to about $44 a pound). But the great reward for Paucton is that beekeeping has taught him: “I was a bit hot tempered, but I’ve learned respect, calmness and patience.
