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Neighbourhood & Rooftop Honey

Neighbourhood & Rooftop Honey

Urban neighbourhood & rooftop honey is one of the great collaborations of modern cities

One of the best things about having to find new ways to solve old problems is the new ways we find to solve old problems. Beehives on urban and commercial rooftops have been producing honey across cities around the world for a few years now. And their numbers are growing every day. 

Vanessa Kwiatkowski and Mat Lumalasi created the term Rooftop Honey when they were the first business to take on the idea in Australia. They originally started Melbourne City Rooftop Honey to raise awareness of the importance of bees while using the abundance of urban pollen to create delicious honey.  The idea already existed in cities in the USA and Europe and that is where the  pair drew inspiration. They knew the concept would work, even though more conventional bee keepers were a bit skeptical.

In the end, they have not only achieved their goals, but they have also created an entire connected community in the venture with more than 40 hives dotted across the rooftops and gardens of CBD and inner city Melbourne. 

This incredible bee hive collaboration is much more than sticking hives on roofs. The entire business of using other people's rooftops, balconies and gardens to create a new kind of distributed community would never have been imagined ten years ago. Now there are entire eco systems of bee hives, sharing space and feeding businesses and customers in the streets below. 

Melbourne City Rooftop Honey is so popular that they have a waiting list of property owners. (The deal is that the property owner gets six kilograms or 20 per cent of each year's honey yield - whichever comes first). 



Bee One Third in Brisbane have also created an ecosystem of hives across Brisbane. Like Melbourne Rooftop Honey, they sell honey and wax through stockists and run workshops teaching bee keeping across Brisbane.


Photos: Main Pic : Bee One Third | Vanessa Kwiatkowski and Mat Lumalasi : Domain | Beekeepers : Melbourne City Rooftop Honey

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