The bee highway through Oslo

The bees play an essential role in providing honey, spreading pollen, and fertilising plants. Unfortunately, the bee population is under threat, and the struggle to find nourishment and shelter is especially challenging for bees in bigger cities.

With that in mind, the urban guild of beekeepers ByBi initiated measures to ensure that more bees can settle and have good lives in the capital. Like a highway for bees, its “pollinator passage” stretches from Holmenkollen in the northwest, to Nøkkelvann lake in the southeast.

Green rooftops, lush parks, and strategically placed beehives make it possible for the bees to find resting places and food almost anywhere in Oslo.

“We are constantly reshaping our environment to meet our own needs, forgetting that other species also live in it,"Agnes Lyche Melvær, creator of the “pollinator passage”, told The Guardian.

“To correct that we need to give them back places in which to live and feed,” she says.

The passage project began in 2014 and has developed to the point where locals now regularly plant flowers on their balconies and build insect hotels or even keep their own beehives. There are few dead zones within the city centre by now, and only a few places on the map are listed as places where ByBi has yet to establish new beehives.

Some of the most impressive beehives in Oslo are found on top of Dansens hus in the Vulkan neighbourhood right by the Akerselva river. Two beehives designed by Snøhetta, renowned Norwegian architecture firm that also designed the Oslo Opera House, are found on the roof there.

Now more and more hotels and buildings around town are also establishing "green" roofs, filled with plants and flowers, so that bees can thrive and survive.

By the way, did you know that honey bees are extremely good at flying? They fly at a speed of around 25 km per hour and flap their wings as many as 200 times per second!