Abstract – Liam Devany - texte en français pas disponible

There is currently a growing movement in high density urban centres to localise food production to promote food sovereignty, reduce CO2 emissions and introduce the population to the general health benefits of local organic food growing and consumption.

An obvious cornerstone of such initiatives is the presence of bees to ensure high levels of pollination of urban food crops. Although there are significant benefits for bees in an urban environment - such as lack of pesticide spraying, plentiful elemental shelter, absence of GM crops and a wide array of plant and tree varieties - there are also significant problems in successfully integrating bees into areas where high density human populations exist.

Very obvious barriers to successful integration - such as vandalism, human fear and a wide scale negative perception of bees by the young - require innovative solutions if local food production is to be successful in cities.

This paper details several methods that have tackled these problems successfully using social approaches and technical innovations that have helped millions of bees to be safely integrated into urban centres and resulted in productive urban food schemes. Several common threads run through each scheme and the concluding findings will provide a template for others to follow who have the same objectives with regards to local food sovereignty.
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