Bees have an essential role in the cycle of nature. Bees pollinate many of the Earth’s flowers thereby helping ecosystems to reproduce and regenerate.

Bees have become endangered and risk extinction due to the use of pesticides in industrial agriculture, parasites, and poor air quality. Yet this is not the only reason that we, at Manifattura Tabacchi, decided to house a number of beehives on B9’s roof:

The first reason is that bees are an excellent gauge of our Planet’s health. In working to protect bees, we are contributing to a project we share with humanity: that of preserving environmental balance.

The second reason is that bees, work in the world and on behalf of the world, so they are the perfect metaphor for what contemporary cities must aspire to become: places in which intelligence and collective efforts are able to flourish, not only for individual gains, but with broader objectives in mind in order to benefit the urban organism as a whole.