- Beekeeper Clarence Chua’s The Sundowner, above traditional shophouse, showcases bee encounter, organic gardening and farm-to-table tastings
- Most people’s encounters with bees involve them getting stung, but Chua says they pose no harm if people are not seen as a threat
Environmentalists have long highlighted the importance of bees to the world’s ecosystem. By carrying pollen from one plant to another, bees help to ensure the production of a huge variety of fruits, nuts and seeds, which promote global food security, nutrition and biodiversity.
Bees and other pollinators, such as birds and bats, affect 35 per cent of the world’s crop production, increasing outputs of 87 important global food crops. Nearly 75 per cent of crops for human consumption, including coffee and cocoa, depend – at least in part – on pollination. In short, most of us will simply not survive without bees.
“They are our essential life partners,” Clarence Chua, a Singaporean beekeeper and serial entrepreneur, says.
Chua, 38, who has started a mini bee farm on a shophouse rooftop in Siglap, a popular cafe and restaurant area in the southeast of the city state, says bees do not belong only in the countryside: they can happily coexist with urban dwellers too – as he is keen to demonstrate at The Sundowner, his rooftop farm experience.