Take a look at me! I’m inexperienced!

A Calgary oil firm’s workplace tower has a bee simply across the nook. This stunning wall-poster factors the way in which to the bee. Sure, ‘the bee’ based on the signal. I’d be fairly embarrassed if I had allowed such a evident grammar error to seem on an in any other case enticing signal. Bee’s, in fact, means one bee, and the “bee’s new residence” is close by. Bees’ is the phrase they needed. Plural possessive. Across the nook, there have been about 60,000 of them. Was there no editor, nobody checking spelling and grammar? Sure, of us, even right here in Calgary, Canada, we’re experiencing the collapse of fundamental data of Grade 3 grammar. However alas, that’s not the one downside right here.

So, there are honey bees in downtown Calgary. I suppose that there was a inexperienced assertion (and some {dollars} exchanged) by the oldsters concerned. As we perpetuate the parable that honey bees are threatened, we entice landlords and companies of all kinds to join beekeeping. Bees are inexperienced. Kind of. As well as, corporations are luring workplace staff away from their residence places of work in covidly-compliant backyards and on remoted sunny decks with the promise of honey bees and gardens exterior the workplace towers that staff are anticipated to reenter. The New York Instances has had two current articles extolling the delights of skyscraper-beekeeping. (See right here and right here.)

The funding firm Nuveen has spent $120 million renovating its workplace tower at 730 Third Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, overhauling the foyer, devoting the second ground to facilities and refurbishing a Twenty second-floor terrace.

And the of completion? Two beehives on a seventh-floor terrace.

Following the most recent development in workplace perks, Nuveen employed a beekeeper to show tenants about their tiny new neighbors and harvest honey for them to take residence.

Workplace staff who had been despatched residence throughout pandemic lockdowns typically sought refuge in nature, tending to houseplants, organising hen feeders and sitting open air with their laptops. Now, as corporations attempt to coax skittish staff again to the workplace and constructing house owners compete for tenants when emptiness charges are hovering, many have hit on the thought of constructing the workplace world really feel extra just like the pure world.

The trouble seeks to offer workplace staff entry to contemporary air, daylight and vegetation, in tune with the idea of biophilia, which says people have an innate reference to nature. Designs that embody nature are proven to advertise well being and wellness.

I can’t fault an organization for desirous to encourage sanity amongst its warehoused staff. However honey bees don’t have to be a part of the combination. Though honey bees might not severely injure the surroundings (and they’re definitely required to maintain our present farming practices), honey bees intervene with the pure ecological stability of our landscapes. As a substitute of honey bees atop an workplace tower, a flock of consolation chickens could be extra appropriate and fewer environmentally invasive. Right here in Calgary, the place honey bees aren’t native and the place native bees could also be displaced by these honey bees, they aren’t wanted to maintain native wildflowers pollinated. That’s the job of untamed, native bees.

As long-time readers of my weblog know, I’m not on an anti-honey-bee campaign. I like observing their mannequin society, communication expertise, and synchronized responses to the whims of nature. I used to be as soon as a industrial beekeeper, dropping dozens of colonies at a time into unsuspecting meadows. At present, I preserve two colonies in my yard as a supply of fascination and honey. Nonetheless, setting colonies on the roof of a big-city skyscraper, in a floral vacuum the place they could want fed sugar-water and the place native bees wrestle to outlive even with out competitors, is a mistake.

Right here’s an image of the colonies. They’re enticing, however pointless, additions to the constructing’s sterile gravel surroundings. Why not a potted plant to feed the wild bees as a substitute? Severely. It could look higher.

Pictures are courtesy of my son, David Miksha, who handed via this workplace tower on October 14.