Here we suggest how you can do it from home or with your friends and improve the environment with small actions. 10 things you can do to help bees.
10 things you can do to help bees and take care of them. It is the best way to collaborate with ecosystems, of course, we also know that wild pollinators can make a difference, from our home, our work, in the city or the countryside we can contribute and save them.
The threats
Phytosanitary products used in agriculture, environmental contamination and the transfer of pathologies between different bee species, have caused them to become ill and die due to a complexity of causes and factors that make accurate diagnosis and effective treatment difficult.
1. Know more to respect them better.
Visit a beekeeping classroom, as a family or in school groups, they exist in all regions of Spain in them we can learn the enormous value they lend to nature. See more of the bees here.
If you can, if you like, you can learn beekeeping in the Ecocolmena online course.
Bringing people closer to bees
Within the school or institute, suggest the visit of a beekeeper to talk about the bees and the products of the hive. In science classes, pay special attention to social insects and plant pollination.
2. Buy local honey
Local honey produced by nearby beekeepers preserves the vitamins and other properties of honey to the maximum. This helps the beekeeper to cover the costs of beekeeping.
Meets all requirements of food standards. Its flavor reflects the local flora and is very different from that of foreign origin sold in supermarkets. If you find jars with crystallized honey, it is a sign of its purity and that it has not been pasteurized.
3. Helps protect bee swarms
Swarming is a natural process when bee colonies decide to reproduce. If a swarm appears, contact your town hall or 112 so they can contact a local beekeeper who will collect the swarm.
Bees in a swarm are usually very calm and present little danger. They become aggressive if disturbed or sprayed with water, you have to leave them alone and wait for a beekeeper to take them away.
4. Become a beekeeper to help the bees from their hive
Beekeeping is a fascinating and interesting hobby, you can eat the honey of your own bees. Every year, beekeeping associations and town halls give introductory courses, then other organizations can advise you, even lend the first hives. See more here
5. Draw attention to our political representatives.
Ask your political representatives what is being done to promote research on recent bee diseases.
Why there are fewer and fewer bees in our ecosystems, how beekeeping is supported from the City Council, the Autonomous Community or at the National level.
This helps to raise awareness among the political class, aid for research projects, courses, grants, etc. depend on them. See more here
6. Do not light a fire in the field, especially in summer.
Hundreds of hives are lost every year due to forest fires, but the environmental damage they cause is even greater, they end the life of entire ecosystems that then take decades to recover and will never be like before.
If you perceive an outbreak of fire try to put it out, if it is big immediately call the fire department. Also take special care with the use of the smoker especially in the summer months.
7. Do not leave bottles, bags, cans and objects in the field or parks.
All these objects pollute the environment and the relationship between it and the bees is inverse, the more pollution the less bees.
Broken glass is tremendously damaging, animals cut themselves with their sharp edges and the magnifying glass effect causes fires, they never completely disappear.
Plastic bags and containers are mostly non-biodegradable materials, they take decades to disappear.
These materials, deposited in the appropriate places for their possible recycling, never throw them in the field and if you see them, pick them up, you will provide a service to the environment of enormous value.
8. Encourage local authorities to use honey plants in public spaces
Gardens and parks are open spaces managed by local authorities.
Planting trees and honey plants, in addition to providing an ornamental value of undoubted value, contribute to feeding a large number of pollinating insects, including bees. See more here
9. If you are a farmer or simply have fruit trees on your farm.
Allow beekeepers’ hives to be installed near your farms.
- Select and use plant protection products with great care; the destruction of natural pollinating insects carries the risk of a decrease in future productivity.
- Never use insecticides when the flowers are open; bees and other insects alight on flowering plants and are poisoned by these chemicals.
- If the use of a phytosanitary product is essential, its application is recommended when the flowers are closed.
- Let wild plants flourish in uncultivated areas, because they contribute to food for bees and other pollinating insects.
10. Help the bees by giving them a home
Many aspiring beekeepers, especially in urban areas, have difficulty finding space for their hives in nearby locations.
If you have a farm near a city and want hives set up, contact a local beekeeping association and they might be able to find a beekeeper in need of a settlement nearby.
by Luis Perez Ventosa
