The bees at Bybi, a collective of beekeepers in Copenhagen, live on the roof. Their home is a complex of Victorian buildings, right in the centre of the city, that looks like an idealised vision of the modern social enterprise, ennobled by the architecture of the past. It’s a place of cottage industry in concert with nature, where the marginalised are brought in from the fringes and corporations stand waiting to help, where jobs happen but a lot of the work is done by volunteers, and where – this bit is important – a lot of time is spent discussing ideas.
Oliver Maxwell, Bybi’s 48-year-old founder, encourages me to examine the buildings more closely. They were once a prison, a workhouse and a hospital; their functions today – a homeless shelter, a young offender institution and, until recently, a job centre – are not so different. Denmark’s Victorian transformation, from “agricultural backwater to industrialised agriculture”, was reflected in how they treated people, Maxwell says.
In the middle of it all is the collective, which looks like a lot of things – a commune, a kitchen-table business, an art space. Everything smells of honey. Long drapes in earthy colours frame the entrance to a space where volunteers jar honey by hand.
Small pots are stacked against a window in what appears to be a random formation, but this turns out to be a stylistic map of the city: each jar is from a particular street, with its own shade and its own taste, thanks to “the flowers people planted, the weather, the bees’ own decisions and choices”, as Maxwell puts it. Between 40 and 50 volunteers come in and out throughout the year, with a core team of 15 undertaking practical, honey-related tasks and events. They have 80 to 100 colonies, not just on this rooftop, but all over the city, on businesses and conference centres, schools, municipal buildings, restaurants.
They produce between four and six tonnes of honey every year. How that turns into money really depends. Sometimes they give it away, at weddings and festivals.
We ask that you share it with someone you care for. And you plant a flower to help the bees.” Sometimes they sell it in the old-fashioned way, at a couple of boutique delicatessens around the city. Sometimes they ask people how much they want to pay; some are generous, some are not.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
