Notre Dame’s bees survived!
By mbrooks on April 19, 2019
Tradition says the candles of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris was created from the beeswax of bees living in the cathedral.
The bees survived fire.
Notre Dame housed two beehives on its roof, totaling about 120,000 bees.
The fire did not reach to the area of the roof above a rose window where the hives were placed.
These beehives arrived on the Notre Dame roof in 2013.
Beyond being burned the fire, the extreme heat of the fire did not affect the beehives.
Beekeeper Nicolas Geant told CNN how deadly the heat could be. He says if the heat was great enough to melt the wax, the bees would have died.
“Wax melts at 63 degrees, if the hive had reached that temperature the wax would have melted and glued the bees together, they would have all perished,” Geant says.
This Instagram picture from a Parisienne pet store shows the location of the beehives on the roof of the Notre Dame Cathedral.