Give your London buildings an engagement program tenants talk about.
Why urban beekeeping works for London buildings
London has genuine forage on offer. GIGL (Greenspace Information for Greater London) puts roughly 47% of Greater London as green space, and Pollinating London Together, a City of London Corporation-backed monitoring programme, recorded pollinator activity across 45 green spaces in its 2024 survey. Hives here have real forage within reach, from the Royal Parks to pocket gardens and green roofs across the City and Canary Wharf.
Local policy backs it too. The London Plan 2021 sets out the Mayor's strategy for the city's development, with policies supporting urban greening, biodiversity net gain, and wildlife corridors. And since February 2024, Biodiversity Net Gain has been a mandatory requirement under the Town and Country Planning Act, meaning most new developments must deliver a minimum 10% net gain in biodiversity value, measured against the Defra biodiversity metric, a real incentive for buildings adding habitat like a managed hive program.
How an urban beekeeping program works in London
A living amenity tenants actually use
Year-round events
Participation data that compounds
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Meet the neighborhood bees
From the Square Mile to Canary Wharf, bees have moved onto some of London's most recognizable rooftops. 40 Leadenhall, J.P. Morgan's 60 Victoria Embankment, 6 Bevis Marks, Park House on Oxford Street, Bloomberg's European headquarters, and RBC's 100 Bishopsgate all run rooftop hives with Alvéole. Six landmark buildings, one program.
Turning your hives into insight
Data collection and instant reporting
Remote sensing establishes baseline indicators across your portfolio, while onsite monitoring (bioacoustics and eDNA) captures species presence and habitat quality at each property. That data feeds directly into TNFD, CSRD, and GRESB reports, generated in minutes from pre-filled templates, with audit trails showing exactly where each number comes from.
Portfolio dashboard and AI agent
See biodiversity trends across all assets, benchmark each property against portfolio average, and export site-level data for individual disclosures. Ask the AI agent questions about TNFD requirements, GRESB scoring, or site-specific risks, and get answers that reference your actual portfolio data and current framework standards.
We service hives across London and the Greater London area, including the following boroughs:
- City of London
- Westminster
- Camden
- Islington
- Tower Hamlets
- Southwark
- Hackney
- Lambeth
- Wandsworth
- Lewisham
- Bromley
- Ealing
and more...
Alvéole in the media
FAQ
Yes. There's no license required to keep bees in the UK. Alvéole voluntarily registers every hive with the National Bee Unit's BeeBase, DEFRA's national database, to support disease surveillance and coordinated hive-health monitoring across the city.
In some central boroughs, hive density is already well above what the area can sustainably support. Written evidence from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew to the UK Parliament's Science, Innovation and Technology Committee predicts London can support roughly 7.5 hives per square kilometre, a threshold some parts of the city already exceed. Alvéole sites hives based on local forage density rather than adding to already-saturated blocks, and pairs each honeybee hive with wild bee habitat (BeeHome) to support London's 130+ native bee species too, not just honeybees.
The active season runs roughly April through September, driven by London's temperate climate and bloom cycle. That's also when most tenant-facing events land, hive tours, harvest days, workshops, so the program's busiest stretch lines up with the season buildings actually want tenant programming.
Yes. Alvéole keeps Italian honey bees, a breed known for its docility, and honey bees are not aggressive away from the hive, rarely stinging unless it's disturbed. Alvéole's beekeepers site hives away from high-traffic rooftop areas and manage all hive access, so tenants interact with the program through workshops and events, not the hive directly.
Yes. Alvéole's program contributes to BOMA 360, BOMA BEST, BREEAM, Fitwel, GRESB, LEED, and WELL, through pollinator habitat, tenant engagement documentation, and biodiversity monitoring.
They stay in the hive. Honey bees don't hibernate or migrate. As temperatures drop, the colony clusters tightly around the queen and vibrates to generate heat, living off the honey it stored through summer. Before the cold sets in, Alvéole winterizes each hive, reducing the entrance, adding insulation, and confirming the colony has enough stores to reach spring. Tenant programming keeps running through winter with indoor workshops, and hands-on beehive visits pick back up in spring once the colony is active again.
