I heard about the illegal but growing trend in Brooklyn for bee keeping and celebrated the rebellious nature of it.

Why not try to produce honey on the roof of your apartment building?

The only question I had in my head is why would bees live in Brooklyn when they could live in the idyllic world of meadows filled with wild flowers and rolling hills in the beautiful world that exists outside cities?

The answer is apparently that cities are becoming the healthier place for bees.

In this month's Monocle magazine - unfortunately you can only see an excerpt online - there's a piece about the apiculturists encouraging people to set up hives in the city and now government buildings in Paris, Marseille, Montpellier and Lille have hives on their roofs.

The reason is that cities have fewer pesticides and more flowers.

"It's a paradox but we realized by bringing them into the city, bees thrived. In the countryside they were hindered by pesticides and genetically modified crops." Felix Gil, Apiculturalist and President of the Paris Section of the National Beekeeping Organization.