Jeff Miller rolls up in his BMW convertible to the gleaming new headquarters of NPR one wet, gusty Monday morning. Miller, a real estate developer, isn’t there to check out the building, a modern mass of concrete and glass and lights on North Capitol Street. He’s delivering cargo: 20,000 European honey bees, buzzing in two wooden boxes destined for NPR’s rooftop.

Miller moonlights as a beekeeper with DC Honeybees, a nonprofit devoted to growing and sustaining bee colonies in the city, and NPR is the latest to solicit his services. Miller has already installed 100 hives this year (including one at a house in Tenleytown earlier that morning), a huge uptick from the 50 he set up during his first year with DC Honeybees in 2009.

Miller is joined by Katy Nally, a 25-year-old Center for Clean Air Policy employee with a bee tattoo behind her ear, who assists with installations. Maury Schlesinger, NPR’s director of real estate and administrative services, follows as Miller pushes a dolly stacked with a vat of sugar water and the two bee boxes through the back channels of the NPR building.

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You’ve probably heard about them — the ubiquitous insecticide that lurks within the plant and isn’t sprayed on like traditional pesticides. Neonicotinoids, as the name suggests, are similar in composition to nicotine and cause certain neurological receptors to be over-stimulated in insects. As a result, bugs that feast on plant tissue that has absorbed the chemical soon incur neurological damage, which can cause paralysis and death. This systemic type of pesticide, which includes imidacloprid, thiamethoxam, and clothianidin, is applied to seeds and absorbed into the plant as it grows, creating an life-long resistance to mostly corn- and soybean-hungry insects. Throughout the European Union, they’re also applied to sunflowers, oil seed rape (canola) and sugar beets.

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Keeping step with other urban-ag-conscious cities, DC Mayor Vincent Gray recently signed a bill into effect that would formally legalize backyard beekeeping in DC. The legislation, which is part of the Sustainable DC Plan, specifically targets urban beekeeping as a means to promote urban agriculture.

Highlighting the broad initiative of sustainable “food,” the plan aims to “put 20 additional acres of land under cultivation for growing food” by 2032. The legislation notes, “A stronger local food supply and distribution system will ensure that District residents have better access to healthy and affordable food from full-service grocery stores, farmers’ markets, and community and commercial agriculture projects within their neighborhoods.” Where local garden and agriculture projects are taking shape, honeybees are an obvious step toward increased crop yield and easier access to nutritious food.

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