bees | Urban Mill – Building IntenCity!

Honey harvest Sunday 🍯! The Test Site’s little workers finished their part for the season and the produce is ready. We spent a couple of hours at the Urban Mill on 22.8.2021 doing the honey harvesting.

The Test Site Honey started off as part of a project at the ”How to change the world” course about 2 years ago. The project spun off to the Test Site adding to the biodiversity of the area 🌺. The garden group at the site planted plenty of flowers for the bees to pollinate so we have high hopes for some delicious honey 💛.

As the new school year is about to start, we are planning on setting up a stand at the Test-Site where you can fill your own jar. Follow Aalto Test-Site on Instagram for the latest announcements: https://www.instagram.com/aaltotestsite/

Text: Festa Isufi
Photos: Senni Alho

Aalto Test Site is a student community started by the students at Aalto University. The aim of the community is to give a space for students to experiment with different projects. One of the projects that started this year is the beekeeping project, where students want to increase the presence of bees as pollinators in urban environments.

Urban Mill offered to be a part of the project by offering the use of their spaces for the students to the honey extraction. Since the beehives are in the Otaniemi campus, the Urban Mill was a great place for the students to do the honey extraction process. This also opened the opportunity for another student beekeeper to join the efforts to do the honey extraction at the same time.

The honey extraction workshop was opened to the community around it and it was joined by a total of 10 people. During the process, the participants learned how to uncap the capped honey frames, how to put the honey frames in the extractor and how to do the extracting. At the end of the day, the result of the workshop was 70 kilograms of honey extraction.