Honeybees Living On Top Of Notre Dame Cathedral Have Survived The Fire

The Notre Dame Honey Bees Survived The Fire

Historians breathed a sigh of relief over the preservation of the many artifacts inside of the Notre Dame Cathedral, and now bee enthusiasts are rejoicing because the building’s 180,000 pollinators miraculously survived the raging fire.

For the last six years, there have been beehives nestled on top of the cathedral’s roof. The hives were part of honeybee colonies that were installed across the city as a means of boosting the dwindling pollinator populations in Europe. The hives have been managed by Notre Dame beekeeper Nicolas Geant since 2013.

So after the team of 400 firefighters finally extinguished the blaze after almost nine hours and satellite photos showed that the three hives had made it through the fire, Geant breathed a sigh of relief.

“It’s a big day. I am so relieved. I saw satellite photos that showed the three hives didn’t burn,” Geant told The Associated Press. “Instead of killing them, the CO2 (from smoke) makes them drunk, puts them to sleep.”

The bees are said to be particularly lucky because the hives were only 100 feet under where the roof was burning. If their hives heated to 63 degrees Celsius (145.4 Fahrenheit), the hive wax would have melted and the bees would have perished.

By: Maytinee Kramer