Despite limited green spaces, London’s bee population is increasing. This is thanks to a popular hobby that is transforming gardens, windowsills and roof terraces into colourful pollen-rich areas. In the British capital urban beekeeping has been growing steadily since 2008 with more people setting up beehives or “apiaries.”
This development is being promoted by Urban Bees, an organization that was founded by Brian McCallum, a teacher, and his partner, Alison Benjamin, a journalist with The Guardian , a liberal, left-wing national paper with a strong interest in environmental issues. Urban Bees aims to educate people about the importance of these creatures and to provide guidance on how to create a bee-friendly environment.
The fact of the matter is that you don’t need to be a beekeeper in order to help the bee population. You can also play a part by planting trees and flowers that offer year-round food. Among the preferred flowers are those commonly classed as weeds such as dandelions , as well as blue and purple flowers like lavender and Nepeta (or catmint ). These plants can help fight the decline in the bee population (the reasons for which are explained by Alison Benjamin in the accompanying interview).
a question of taste Contrary to common belief, bees seem to have a better life in cities than in the countryside, where modern farming practices have caused great damage to their habitat. Urban honey often tastes better because of the variety of flowers and pollens available to the “urban bees.”
In London you can buy local products at places like Borough Market, Hackney City Farm, as well as at local delicatessens like A. Gold in Spitalfields. It sells honey from the Urban Bees apiary in King’s Cross.
think about it Urban Bees also provides training for beekeepers. Yet beekeeping requires a great amount of both skill and time. It can also be expensive, as starting costs for the hive, bees and equipment, can come to more than £1,000. Space is also very important. The location needs to be secure as you need enough space for handling the boxes.
¿cómo se dice...? ¡Me picó una abeja! = I’ve been stung by a bee!
(play the audio) Interview: Honey, I’m home! Bees play a vital role in sustaining life on Earth, but they are under threat. We asked Alison Benjamin, co-author of the book A World Without Bees: The mysterious decline of the honeybee and what it means for us , why this is happening:
Alison Benjamin (Standard British accent): There’s various theories for why honeybees have been declining. It’s thought to be a combination of factors. One of them is lack of food in the countryside: because of intensive farming practices we now have lack of wild flowers, lack of hedgerows , no diversity in the food source, there’s maybe a few hundred acres that are planted with one crop , and while that’s in flower the bees can eat, but when that’s gone, there’s nothing else for them.
There’s a parasite that the honey bees have called the Varroa mite , and this Varroa mite lives on the back of the bee and it sucks its fluid and weakens the bee, so the bee becomes more susceptible to viruses and diseases, a bit like us; if we’re weakened and we get a ‘flu’ virus, or, you know, pneumonia , then we can die, it’s similar with the bees: this parasite weakens them and they’re more susceptible to viruses, which can then kill them.
climate change And there are other factors:
Alison Benjamin: There’s also the issue of pesticides. There’s a ban currently with various pesticides in Europe, temporary ban while more research is being done into the impact on bees, but they have been implicated in the death of bees.
Climate change is another issue, the fact that we can now have plants coming out at different times and maybe the bees aren’t coming out at the same time, and then there’s a sort of mismatch between them, when the food source is available and when the bees are out foraging, so it’s really a combination of factors.
a helping hand Alison Benjamin and her partner, Brian MacCallum, decided to do something about this. They starting keeping bees and they set up an organization called Urban Bees. When not keeping bees, Alison Benjamin is a journalist with The Guardian . She says that there are now plenty of “apiaries” in London and that people don’t have to keep bees in order to help them:
Alison Benjamin: You don’t even need to have a garden to look after bees. If you’ve got a windowsill, you can have a window box that could be full of crocuses in the spring, lavender in the summer, and there’ll be other plants for the autumn as well. If you’ve got hanging baskets , instead of filling them full of bedding plants , which are annual plants, which don’t actually have any nectar and pollen in them, replace them with perennial plants which do have pollen and nectar, so things like Nepeta or lavenders, you know, there’s plenty of plants that you can bide (buy) that are good for bees, you don’t have to have these bedding plants. So, yes, you can have hanging baskets, you can have window boxes, you know, any bit of space you’ve got, just make sure you’ve got something that’s flowering for the bees.
