Give your Portland buildings an engagement program tenants talk about.
Why urban beekeeping works for Portland buildings
Portland has one of the strongest green roof requirements in the country: under the Central City 2035 ecoroof rule, new buildings over 20,000 square feet in the Central City Plan District must install a vegetated roof. Those ecoroofs are ready-made forage, so a hive program puts that green infrastructure to work, turning a code requirement into a tenant program.
.png)
How an urban beekeeping program works in Portland
A living amenity tenants actually use
Year-round events
Participation data that compounds
.png)
Meet the neighborhood bees
Nineteen floors above downtown Portland, KOIN Tower's hive gives tenants something they can get their hands on. Their Alvéole beekeeper runs sessions where people work the extractor, watch raw honey get filtered, and fill their own jars to take home.
.png)
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 Portland and the greater Portland area, including:
...and more.
Alvéole in the media
FAQ
Portland permits urban beekeeping, and Oregon requires larger beekeeping operations to register their colonies with the state Department of Agriculture. Alvéole handles registration, siting, and compliance for every install.
Yes. Alvéole keeps Italian honey bees, a breed known for its docility. Honey bees are not aggressive away from the hive and rarely sting unless it's disturbed. Our 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.
A rooftop program builds on the green infrastructure Portland already requires through its ecoroof rule. Each honeybee hive is paired with wild bee habitat to support native pollinators, and Alvéole's biodiversity monitoring turns your building's nature data into reporting you can use for GRESB, BOMA BEST, LEED, WELL, and other certifications.
Portland's mild coastal climate gives a long urban foraging window, roughly March through September, from spring bloom to summer blackberry and clover. That window is also when most tenant-facing events land, hive tours, harvest days, and workshops, so the program's busiest stretch lines up with the season buildings actually want tenant programming.
Portland has an active beekeeping community. Alvéole sites hives based on local forage density rather than adding to already-busy blocks, and pairs each honeybee hive with wild bee habitat to support native pollinators too, not just honeybees.
They stay in the hive. Honey bees don't hibernate or migrate. As temperatures drop, the colony clusters around the queen and lives off the honey it stored through summer, though Portland's mild winters mean bees still get the occasional flight day. The wet season makes moisture management the priority, so Alvéole winterizes each hive for ventilation and confirms the colony has enough stores to reach spring. Tenant programming keeps running with indoor workshops, and hands-on hive visits pick back up once the colony is active again.
