{"id":12865,"date":"2018-05-17T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-17T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:/wp-json/wp/v2/article/12865///wp-json/wp/v2/article/12865//www.yesmagazine.org/wp-json/wp/v2/article/12865//article/wp-json/wp/v2/article/12865//peace-justice-urban-bee-farms-transform-detroits-vacant-lots-20180517/wp-json/wp/v2/article/12865//"},"modified":"2019-11-26T00:56:46","modified_gmt":"2019-11-26T08:56:46","slug":"urban-bee-farms-transform-detroits-vacant-lots","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:/wp-json/wp/v2/article/12865///wp-json/wp/v2/article/12865//www.yesmagazine.org/wp-json/wp/v2/article/12865//social-justice/wp-json/wp/v2/article/12865//2018/wp-json/wp/v2/article/12865//05/wp-json/wp/v2/article/12865//17/wp-json/wp/v2/article/12865//urban-bee-farms-transform-detroits-vacant-lots","title":{"rendered":"An Unusual Way to Rescue a City From Blight/wp-json/wp/v2/article/12865/u2014Bees"},"content":{"rendered":"/wp-json/wp/v2/article/12865/n
For over a decade, Detroit has been at the center of the country’s urban farm movement. The gardens and farms established on the city’s vacant land are a practical answer to both poverty and blight./wp-json/wp/v2/article/12865/n
Now, urban bees are moving in. That’s obviously a good thing for the city farms, but it’s also helping with the blight./wp-json/wp/v2/article/12865/n
The Detroit Blight Removal Task Force assembled by former President Barack Obama recommended the city remove 40,000 blighted properties within five years. That was four years ago. As the city bulldozed battered homes and buildings, about 24 square miles of vacant land has opened up. Some of it has become unsanctioned dumping grounds, perpetuating a cycle of blight./wp-json/wp/v2/article/12865/n “People want to see their areas cleaned up. They want to see all the blight removed,” says Timothy Paule, a Detroit resident and beekeeper. “And that costs money.”/wp-json/wp/v2/article/12865/n So, bees./wp-json/wp/v2/article/12865/n /wp-json/wp/v2/article/12865/n Last year, Paule and his partner, Nicole Lindsey, bought a 32,000-square-foot lot on the city’s east side from the Detroit Land Bank Authority for $350 and turned it into an urban bee farm. And they say more bee farms are coming./wp-json/wp/v2/article/12865/n Paule and Lindsey run Detroit Hives, a nonprofit organization they use to transform vacant lots into honeybee farms. Beyond reducing blight, its mission is also to conserve honeybees, whose drastic declines worldwide have been attributed partly to pesticides and herbicides, and to educate the community about the bees’ vital contribution as pollinators necessary for food production./wp-json/wp/v2/article/12865/n Honeybees pollinate about $15 billion worth of crops each year, according to a 2016 study from the U.S Department of Agriculture. They produce wax, and their venom is known to have healing properties./wp-json/wp/v2/article/12865/n