If you know anything about conservation and ecology, you’ll know about the move to conserve bees. Globally, bee populations are plummeting due to pesticides, habitat loss and the associated loss of resources like food.
It’s easy to feel grim about this, especially when we rely so heavily on bees and the ecosystem services they provide. But there are things you can do to help sustain your local bee populations.
I spoke to Perry Richardson, an apiologist (she studies bees), about what every day people can do to conserve bees. Here’s what she had to say:
1. Plant a bee garden
This is probably the simplest thing you can do. Planting plants like basil, borage, sunflowers and lavender attracts bees and gives them a food source.
An added bonus is that these plants tend to invite butterflies as well. So get yourself some of these and get ready for your own little patch of heaven. As Perry said:“if everyone had a bee garden, our bee populations would just thrive.”
Photo by Behzad Ghaffarian on Unsplash.
2. Set up a bee bath
This concept is very much like a bird bath. Bees can get dehydrated and overheated too, and a bee bath helps prevent that. All you need to do is set up a shallow container with some water and a few pebbles that breach the surface and provide the bees with little platforms so they can drink water without the fear of drowning.
Photo by Sian Cooper on Unsplash.
3. Stay professional
You might find an unwanted bee hive somewhere on your property and naturally you’d want to have it removed. Just be sure to find a professional bee keeper to help you, and not some friend, or a friend of a friend of a friend, who can do it for cheap.
Not only will a professional help you get rid of the bees responsibly, they’ll also minimise damage to the hive, the bees, and won’t pose a threat to your safety by angering the bees.
In case you didn’t know, bees can actually kill you. 60 people die from bee, wasp and hornet stings every year, and stings lead to over 220 000 emergency room visits, so you want to find someone who knows how to handle them.
Perry does professional bee keeping and hive removals.
Photo by Jessica Evans.
4. Do your research
Once you’ve found a professional bee keeper to help you, ask the right questions. Are they a registered bee keeper? Do they plan on fumigating the hive? What will they do with the hive?
Asking these questions will help you get rid of the bees responsibly. If the person you’ve found wants to fumigate, don’t use them. They essentially poison the bees.
But it doesn’t end there. “You’re potentially killing up to 30 hives in the surrounding area,” explained Perry. “Once that hive is dead, other bees smell the unprotected honey and they collect that honey and take the poison back to their own hives.” And just like that, you’ve killed hundreds of thousands of bees that could’ve been pollinating your local supply of crops.
80% of our crops are pollinated by bees, including onions, potatoes, avocado, broccoli and watermelon. Photo by Nadine Primeau on Unsplash.
5. Keep a hive
You can have your own hive if you have a property large enough. Make sure the box won’t interact with any animals, children, or other people. Basically, you can arrange with a beekeeper to keep a hive on your property.
They do all the work and maintenance, and you get to enjoy the bees. Perry said we need more people willing to have hives on their property. “We need more people providing space and resources for bees,” she said, adding that the more spaces we give them, the less unwanted conflict with humans.
Perry transfers honeycomb to a Langstroth box hive. Photo by Jessica Evans.
When it comes down to it, all you need to do to protect bees is to be a bit more conscious of how you affect them. Even the smallest gesture, like giving a tired bee some sugar water, goes a long way for intercepting the plight of these precious little insects. As Perry says "we can all be friends of the bees."
If you have a hive that needs removing, or if you'd like to know more about Perry's business, check it out here.
Everything she does is bee-friendly, and if your hive has any honey, you get to keep it!
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