Auckland SkyCity Convention Centre fire: 100,000 bees on nearby rooftop survive the smoke

Friday, 25 October 2019

A swam of bees living in a beehive on an Auckland CBD rooftop have survived fumes from the SkyCity Convention Centre fire.

Bees living in a rooftop beehive near the SkyCity Convention Centre fire have survived, amid fears they may have been killed by smoke.

The beehive, owned by bee rescue Bees Up Top, is located about 30 metres away from the fire on top of the Rydges Hotel in central Auckland, a site with near-perfect beekeeping conditions with ample sunlight and small chances of vandalism.

The fire at the SkyCity convention centre started on Tuesday afternoon.

Jessie Whitfield, who looks after 20 rooftop beehives in the CBD with husband Luke, feared the 100,000 bees may have been killed by the smoke.

Whitfield was tending to another beehive nearby when she saw smoke coming from the direction of the Sky Tower, and immediately feared for the safety of the bees.

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Beekeeper Jessie Whitfield feared the bees would either perish in the smoke or leave the hive and become homeless.

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'If toxic smoke has gotten inside the beehive and got trapped, it's going to be really damaging to the bees,' she said on Wednesday.

The bees on the Rydges Hotel rooftop had a rough start to life, after their queen was killed after being hit by a car in Albany.

On Thursday afternoon Whitfield was relieved to find the bees had survived; in fact, the queen bee had laid even more eggs from when she last checked on them about five minutes before the fire started at 1.10pm on Tuesday.

'I was really nervous about checking them but when I opened up the hive I was so happy to see the queen had been laying [eggs] and her workers were still around to protect their queen.

'Like the bees of Notre Dame, they stayed down, looked after their queen and survived the fumes.'

Bees will always follow their queen, meaning they could have perished in the smoke, she said. Alternatively, had the queen left the hive, the bees would have been left homeless.

'Wherever their queen is, that's where they are going to be.'

Whitfield had wondered if the hive's honey would have an added smokey flavour, but a taste test revealed the smoke had no effect.

'I poked my finger into the honey cells and there was no difference in the honey's flavour.'

The bees have been living on top of the Rydges Hotel since last year, when Whitfield rescued them from a busy road in Albany, on the North Shore.

The bees had swarmed around their queen, who lay dead on the road after being hit by a car.

'Their life started off in a hard way. They were doing really well up on the rooftop.'

Bees pollinated a third of the world's food, Whitfield told Stuff last year, and without them 'we'd basically be living on grains and rice'.

She believed there was a lesson to be learnt from the bees' resilience.

'The bees definitely took a bit of a hit. Humans should take a leaf from the bees' book and power on as usual.'