urban beekeepers . On the rooftops, in the gardens, on the terraces and balconies, honeycombs of rich honey housing hundreds of thousands of bees that work tirelessly to produce their precious products and promote biodiversity.
The beekeeping urban is fashionable. The objective? Produce honey at home and, incidentally, help bees, currently in danger of extinction. Or just the opposite, helping them can be a priority, and honey the gift we get for doing it. Cases and motivations, there are them for all tastes.
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Bees, good for cities
Be that as it may, advocacy groups for this practice are convinced that bees are beneficial to cities for a myriad of reasons. But let’s open the zoom, because when it comes to bees, their key role in maintaining ecosystems and supporting food security cannot be ignored.
Therefore, that they are for the world there is no doubt. As is well known, bees are pollinators, which makes them a key part of today’s ecosystems. In fact, of the 100 crop species that supply the world with 90 percent of its food, bees pollinate 70 percent. That is, a vast majority of them , so our survival depends on theirs, without more stories.
The seriousness of the situation that implies the plummeting of bee populations in the world, observed during the last decade, has led to initiatives such as this one, the practice of urban beekeeping to counteract it, as far as possible.
Honey production in cities is beneficial for the urban environment because, fundamentally, they promise a greener environment. Its pollination promotes it and, at the same time, if the city corresponds to it by creating or adapting green spaces in which they can be happy without having to eat partridges, then a positive synergy is created for both parties. Greener cities, happy bees and much healthier .
For its part, the urban environment can be friendlier to bees , simply because pesticides, which seem to be their main enemy, are kept away. Paradoxically, the countryside is more aggressive for them as a result of the colonization carried out by intensive agriculture, based on the use of chemicals galore.
Produce honey at home
Ecological urban gardens are another perfect enclave to locate an artificial hive, both because they represent a natural environment free of pesticides and because of the pollinating work they carry out, necessary for the success of the crops.
The fashion of putting a beehive at home, whether on the terrace or in any other place, finds the brake of municipal regulations . Not all cities allow this, although the truth is that the plight of bees is helping to turn restrictions into permissiveness.
Finding out about it is, therefore, the first step that every aspiring urban beekeeper has to take and, in the event of restrictive regulations, it is convenient to know at what minimum distance from the urban center it can be installed.
Perhaps in a nearby urban garden there is the possibility of doing it. And, by the way, in some cities where it is allowed, such as Paris, London or Brooklyn, there is no shortage of those who do business with homemade honey, sold with great success as a delicatessen product.
The market offers a wide variety of hives, many of them designed in such a way that they allow honey to be collected without the need to be directly exposed to insects, always ready to stick their stinger when they see theirs threatened.
The bees, against the ropes
The bees disappear . Its alarming rate of disappearance has increased exponentially around the world. The cause? It remains a mystery, but more and more is being learned about it, and there is a broad consensus in attributing its debacle to the use and abuse of pesticides.
For the account that it brings us, knowing the reason for its decline is fundamental , and scientists from all over the world have been employed in it since its worrying decline began a few years ago. Since then, the rate of population loss has not slowed, and any initiative that helps its recovery is welcome.
Placing beehives in cities is an effective way to help them or, what is the same, to help ourselves, since we depend on them for the survival of the human species and, in general, so that biodiversity does not collapse.
In addition to their key role in maintaining ecosystems and, therefore, in the food chain, bees are considered bioindicators, something like canaries in coal mines, which were used to warn of the presence of gases. harmful.
In this case, its function is not to warn of the presence of gases , but of the environmental state of a specific place. If a certain habitat has pollution problems of any kind, especially atmospheric, biodiversity will be affected, logically, and bees are a good indicator to assess whether the environment is in good health.
In this sense, cities in which bees can thrive will be healthier urban environments than those in which they cannot. Welcoming bees and being good hosts to them is welcoming life !
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