With 150 lime trees and a wide variety of other plants and flowers, Lyngby Campus is perfect for beekeeping.
Bees are by and large peaceful creatures that simply want to make it through their busy days collecting nectar and pollen. There are nine hives on DTU Lyngby Campus, and the bees have to visit around 20 million flowers to make 1 kilo of honey.
“The campus is an ideal place for bees. DTU has consciously planted a great many plants that promote the insect population, and this diversity—particularly the 150 lime trees I have counted—is an absolute treat for the bees. And, of course, the bees are equally important to the plants,” relates Valeriu Popescu, bee-keeper and assistant engineer at Danchip.
|
Valeriu Popescu previously kept hives at his home, but his house is out in the country where the fields are far too monotonous for the honey to be interesting. So he is delighted that the University has found the space for him to set up a small apiary on campus.
|
|
 |
A number of scout bees buzz around and investigate an area around the apiary with a radius of at least two kilometres. They then return to the hive and perform a special dance to inform the other bees of the best places to visit. Towards the end of the summer, there may be as many as 60,000 bees in each hive, so a huge number of flights have to be completed to find enough food for all.
Edited article from DTUavisen no. 7, September 2015.