Oslo, Norway has begun catering to a new tourist: bees! More than half of Norway’s capital is forests and parks, and recently, the city has expanded accommodations for insects. For them, this city is a refreshing change.

In Oslo, people have made it their mission to provide food and shelter to local bees. Together, they have made history; they built the world’s first bee ‘highway.’

The Vulcan Beehives (left) and native meadows in the Norwegian Palace Park (right).

The project was led by ByBi, Oslo’s urban beekeeping association. Recognizing the challenges bees face today, ByBi designed a network of paths that would lead bees through and around the city. It wasn’t easy. ByBi had to keep some unique conditions in mind.

The nodes of the network are waystops with food or housing. ByBi needed to ensure that the commute between each stop would be a reasonable distance — for a bee. There also had to be enough pollination stations to support the number of hives in the area. In short, ByBi had to think like a bee.

One adult bee lives only a couple of weeks, and reducing the distance a worker bee needs to travel can extend its lifetime. This meant setting up enough local food and housing accommodations throughout the city. A bee wants to keep busy, and it’s much easier when they can work in their own backyard.

But ByBi couldn’t do it alone. Oslo residents came together to support ByBi’s plan. Hives and flower gardens popped up in backyards, on rooftops, along windowsills and terraces. People were buzzing about, making the exteriors of their homes and work as bee-friendly as possible. ByBi encouraged residents to post their contributions on the Pollinator Passage website, which displays the web of way-stops throughout the city. Everything was voluntarily built by the local government, companies, and residents.

Marie Skjelbred stands out as a bee champion. The amateur beekeeper convinced her employer to contribute over $50,000 to ByBi’s project. On the 12th-floor terraces of her company’s building, two beehives and an abundance of flowering plants support over 45,000 bees. That’s a lot of money for one waystop, but Marie believes that the bees are worth it. One bee “[doesn’t] produce more than a spoon of honey,” Marie explained. “If we did their job, paid at the minimum wage, a pot of honey would cost $182,000.”

Marie Skjelbred tending the beehives on her company’s building. Sedum plants are flowering around the chic structure.

To accomplish their goal, ByBi made it a mission to preach the plight of the bees. Agnes Lyche Melvaer, a landscape architect at ByBi, told The Guardian, “We are constantly reshaping our environment to meet our needs, forgetting that other species also live in it.” To her and others, the solution was clear – we have to reshape the environment to accommodate the bees.

One-third of Norway’s 200 bee species are endangered. Climate change, pesticide use, and habitat destruction have severely threatened bee populations. It isn’t only wild bees that are threatened. Domesticated bees have been in steady decline due to colony collapse disorder, the cause of which remains unclear. With native and domesticated populations declining, the losses add up. 

Around 30 to 40 percent of food production relies on bees and other insect pollinators. Bees contribute the equivalent of $500 billion USD to global food production. For the average consumer, fewer bees contribute to rising food prices.

Despite their importance, people tend not to recognize the value of bees. One of the most important things the Oslo’s Bee Highway project accomplished was refamiliarizing people with the importance of bees.

A map of waystops built by residents and companies.

It is clear that if food production and the global food market are to be preserved, folks will have to do more than buy a “Save the Bees” t-shirt. Oslo set an example that the rest of the world should follow, coordinating beyond corporate entities. Perhaps people and bees have some things in common. Just as a whole hive comes together to make a pot of honey, the combination of simple, individual actions made a huge difference for the city’s urban insects. It was only by coming together that Oslo could have made such an impact.

ByBi organized the whole city.

This initiative is an inspiring solution for bee crises elsewhere. If it worked in Oslo, who’s to say it wouldn’t work in other large cities around the world? Perhaps during their next elections, people worldwide will make it a priority to support jobs – and has there ever been a harder worker than a bee?