Name: 【TEDx】TEDxBoston - Noah Wilson-Rich - Urban Beekeeping
Uploaded: 2014-04-26T05:30:37.000Z
Duration: 13 min 34 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I would like to tell you my goal for this talk.

Which is to change your perspective on many things.

This man is wearing what we call a "Bee Beard."

Now this is what many of you might picture

Maybe insects or maybe anything that has more legs than two.

And let me start by telling you I gotcha. I understand that.

keep them open and change your perspective about honeybees.

Notice that this man is not getting stung.

He probably has a queen bee tied to his chin

so this really demonstrates our relationship with honeybees

and that goes deep back for thousands of years.

We're very co-evolved because we depend on bees for pollination

and even more recently as an economic commodity.

Many of you may have heard that honeybees are disappearing.

This is called "Colony Collapse Disorder"

Researchers around the globe still do not know what's causing it.

But what we do know is that with the declining numbers of bees

the costs of over a 130 fruit and vegetable crops that we rely on

So honeybees are important for their roll in the economy

Here you can see some pictures of what are called green roofs

We're familiar with the image on the left.

That shows a local neighborhood garden in the south end.

That's where I call home. I have a beehive in the backyard.

Check out this image above the orange line in Boston.

It's on the rooftop right on the corner there

and it's been there for a couple of years now.

The way that urban beekeeping currently operates is that the

beehives are quite hidden and it's not because they need to be,

it's just because people are uncomfortable with the idea.

And that's why I want you today to try to think about this.

Think about the benefits of bees in cities

and why they really are a terrific thing.

Let me give you a brief rundown on how pollination works.

So we know flowers. We know fruits and vegetables.

Even some alfalfa and hay that the livestock

for the meats that we eat rely on pollinators.

But you've got male and female parts to a plant here

and basically the pollinators are attracted to plants for their nectar

and in the process a bee will visit some flowers and pick up some pollen

or that male, kind of sperm counterpart along the way

and eventually, an apple in this case will be produced.

You can see the orientation, the stem is down.

The blossom end has fallen off by the time we eat it.

But that's a basic overview of how pollination works.

And let's think about urban living, not today and not in the past

We have huge, grand challenges these days of habitat loss.

We have more and more people, billions of people.

In 100 years god knows how many people and how little space

So we need to change the way that we see cities.

And looking at this picture on the left of New York City today

that bounces heat back into the atmosphere.

Contributing to global climate change no doubt.

What about in 100 years. If we have green rooftops everywhere

and gardening and we create our own crops right in the cities.

and we also educate and create new jobs locally.

We need bees for the future of our cities and urban living.

Where we deliver, install and manage honeybee hives

And we introduce honeybees and the idea of beekeeping

in your own back yard or rooftop or fire escape for even that matter.

And seeing how simple it is and how possible it is.

There's a counterintuitive trend that we noticed in these numbers.

Now this has been a huge problem for many years.

Basically since the late 1980's when the Varroa Mite came

and brought many different viruses, bacteria and fungal diseases with it.

Overwintering success is hard and that's when most of the colonies are lost.

And we found that in the cities bees are surviving better

than they are in the country. A bit counterintuitive right?

Subtitles ListPlay Video

【TEDx】TEDxBoston - Noah Wilson-Rich - Urban Beekeeping

urban

healthy

counterintuitive

laughter