ELIZABETH JACKSON: The White House has them and so do an increasing number of Americans - they're beehives.
Our North America correspondent Jane Cowan visited a couple of recreational beekeepers in inner-city DC.
MAGGIE KOZIOL: So we've got kept honey..
MR KOZIOL: Oh, they're looking nice.
MAGGIE KOZIOL: Oh, look at this one!
JANE COWAN: On top of a row house in Washington DC, in the oppressive sticky heat of summer, Maggie Koziol and her husband are covered from head to toe in white, their faces shielded with veils.
The roof is so hot it's almost burning my feet through my shoes, but they're up here tending to their bees - two hives they installed a few years ago.
Maggie Koziol says it was a natural extension of the other things they do around the house.
MAGGIE KOZIOL: We are very novice. This is our second year as beekeepers. We compost, we recycle, now we beekeep.
In our yard we have tomatoes and we have a kiwi plant and we have lots of flowers, and any given day, you'll see them all around. So it's just absolutely amazing.
JANE COWAN: They're part of a growing army of recreational beekeepers bringing hives into neighbourhoods around DC and other American cities.
New York only lifted a ban on beekeeping three years ago, triggering an explosion in urban beekeeping there.
MAGGIE KOZIOL: You find beekeepers all around, so you start talking about it and they just kind of come out of the woodwork.
And everyone's interested in them - I think in our two block radius, we've got two hives on our roof, then there are four hives a block away, and there might be two in that direction.
I kind of like to think that the majority of the bees that we see in our neighbourhood are ours.
JANE COWAN: Like most people in this political city, Maggie and her husband both work more than full time jobs.
Beekeeping, she says, is a welcome escape.
MAGGIE KOZIOL: You sit there and watch the bees, and sometimes I'll take a beer on the roof and sit there and watch the bees sort of flitting about, and it's just an incredible thing.
Even working the bees - I mean, opening up the hive and going through the different frames and looking at the patterns and their brood and how much honey might be in any given frame - it's just very calming. I love it.
JANE COWAN: There's no shortage of bee trivia: the adage that you should either move a hive less than three feet or more than three miles or the bees won't be able to find their way home; the notion that the pitch of the buzz bees make when they're happy is within a hertz or two of middle C on a piano - when they're aggravated, that sound rises to a sharp C.
Then there are the mysteries of bee society: where each bee lives only about a month, where females do all the work, a single queen rules the hive, and males exist only to eat and procreate before they're cast out of the colony each winter.
And of course there's the best part of all.
MAGGIE KOZIOL: If things work out well, then we not only help pollinate, we'll also get some honey. So, you know, who wouldn't want a nice piece of toast with some homemade, home-grown honey on it?
JANE COWAN: And just for the record - this correspondent can report bees don't like the smell of sunscreen, and you can't outrun a bee.
This is Jane Cowan in Washington for Correspondents Report.
ELIZABETH JACKSON: Oh dear, poor Jane; as usual, going beyond the call of duty for a story. She's a gem, I hope she's alright.