Museum Of Fine Arts Abuzz About Rooftop Tenants

ST. PETERSBURG, FL — The Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg is buzzing about its newest collaborative project.

Not only is the museum highlighting the beauty and value of insects in its current exhibit, The Grasshopper and the Ant and Other Stories, as told by Jennifer Angus, but its roof is now home to several colonies of honey bees.

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The museum partnered with Noble Nectar Apiaries to provide a residence for hives that needed a home. The bees are earning their keep by pollinating urban gardens and parks in downtown St. Petersburg.

Additionally, the museum expects to harvest its own honey this fall.

Fun facts about the honey bees:

• Pollinators, like bees and butterflies, allow almost 70 percent of all flowering plants to reproduce.
• The fruits and seeds from insect-pollinated plants make up more than 30 percent of the foods and beverages that people consume. In Florida, commodity crops like blueberries, watermelons, cucumbers and onions would produce little to no fruit if it were not for the honey bee, according to the Florida Department of Agriculture.
• In the past 20 years, the global phenomenon of Colony Collapse Disorder has seen great improvements but there is still the need to protect our little pollinators.
• There are more than 20,000 known types of bees, spanning across every continent except Antarctica, and their ancestors have existed for 80 million years. Honey bees make up a small percentage of the known types of bees. Honey bees are not the same as bumble bees, wasps or yellow jackets.
• The Florida heat does not bother the bees. They are free to fly in and out of their hives all day. A worker bee will come and go from its hive more than 300,000 times in its lifetime.
• Honey bees have five eyes, four wings, six legs and two stomachs (one for food, one for nectar).
• Honey bees die when they lose their stinger, so they don’t want to sting anyone. They will only do so when they feel threatened.