Give your Washington DC buildings an engagement program tenants talk about.
Why urban beekeeping works for Washington DC buildings
The Sustainable DC 2.0 Action Plan commits the District to becoming the healthiest, greenest, most livable city for all residents, with biodiversity and native plants built into its green infrastructure.
The city's Green Area Ratio zoning rule rewards new commercial development for vegetated roofs and planted space. Those green roofs are exactly the forage a hive needs, so a program turns a landscape requirement into a tenant program.
How an urban beekeeping program works in Washington DC
A living amenity tenants actually use
Year-round events
Participation data that compounds
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Meet the neighborhood bees
Tanger Outlets brought a rooftop honeybee colony to its National Harbor center in partnership with Alvéole, part of the company's sustainability commitment. The hive gives shoppers and staff a hands-on connection to urban nature, with summer beekeeping workshops and live updates from the colony on MyHive. The launch was covered by Washingtonian.
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 Washington DC and the greater DMV area, including:
...and more.
Alvéole in the media
FAQ
DC legalized and regulated beekeeping through the Sustainable Urban Agriculture Apiculture Act, overseen by the Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE). Colonies must be registered with DOEE, with hive-count and setback rules based on lot size. 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.
The foraging season runs roughly March through October, opening with the spring cherry blossoms. 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.
The District has an active, well-regulated beekeeping scene, so 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. Before winter, Alvéole winterizes each hive and confirms the colony has enough stores to reach spring. Tenant programming keeps running through the colder months with indoor workshops, and hands-on hive visits pick back up once the colony is active again.
