Honeybees Police Airport Air Quality
by Christine Lepisto, Berlin on 05. 7.06
Honeybees are on patrol at Germany's largest airports. The bees are at the service of science, while producing a tasty treat to boot: Honeybees are especially sensitive to air contamination. The process of making 1 kilogram (about two pounds) of honey requires bees to visit 15 million blossoms, travelling 150,000 trips between the hive and the field, to gather 3 kilograms of nectar. In the process, the bees pick up contaminants in the air and which have settled onto the flowers they visit, and concentrate them, making them extremely effective samplers for the amount of pollution in the environment where they work.
Hamburg claims to be the first airport in Europe to put bees to work, starting in 1999. Since then the airports at Lübeck, Hannover, Dresden, Köln/Bonn and Nürnberg have joined in. And the results must sound as sweet as honey to the Airport authorities and neighbors: the air and environment around the airports is so clean that the honey produced meets food quality standards. The airports use the honey as gifts on special occasions. Lass es schmecken!
Via: Lufthansa Magazine
Photo via: ::Cirrus image
