Urban beekeeping creating a buzz around Taipei

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/11/07
By Lee Hsin-yin, CNA staff reporter 

Whenever Jimmy Yen (燕君迪) opens the door of his dimly lit fourth-floor apartment in Taipei, he is greeted with a buzz that only grows louder as he steps out onto his balcony. Sometimes he emerges wearing a white jacket, gloves, a broad-brimmed hat and a veil.

Yen, however, is not an eccentric celebrity but rather a hobbyist in the growing niche of urban beekeeping.

“The relationship between bees and human beings is amazing,” he says, as he looks at the three buzzing hives on his balcony, in which he keeps some 150,000 bees.

While urban beekeeping has been gaining popularity in cities such as Tokyo, Seoul, Vancouver and Chicago over the past five years, Taipei has been slower to adopt the idea.    [FULL  STORY]