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🏙️ Beekeeping in the City: How Urban Hives Behave Differently

A 3D city block with rooftop and ground hives, showing how the urban heat island, green-space cover and colony density change forage and colony behaviour.

Ecology & Conservation Biology3DModerate60 FPS

A 3D city block regenerates around a hive that can be sited on a rooftop or at ground level, tinting every impervious surface hotter as the heat-island slider rises while bees stream out only to the green forage patches within flight range.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

Concrete and asphalt trap and re-radiate solar heat far more than parks or gardens, pushing city temperatures above the surrounding countryside; forage is patchy rather than continuous, and rival hives within flight range compete for the same scarce green tiles.

🎮 How to Use

Raise the heat island slider to see the block redden, lower green space cover to watch forage patches thin out, add rival hives to see forage share drop, and switch between a rooftop and ground-level hive to compare microclimate swing.

💡 Did You Know?

Rooftop hives often swing more than twice as far in daily temperature as a hedge-sheltered ground apiary, yet dense ornamental planting in cities can give urban colonies a longer, more diverse bloom season than many rural monoculture landscapes.

⚙ Under the hood

An interactive 3D city block that regenerates around a rooftop or ground-level hive, tinting impervious surfaces hotter as an urban-heat-island slider rises while instanced bees fly only to the green forage patches within range, and rival hives placed nearby visibly cut into the colony's forage share.

urban-beekeepingheat-islandforage-competitionrooftop-hivesbiodiversity

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install