Pau G noticed this, passionate about “birds and bugs” on his Twitter account. photographed nine dead honey bees next to a withered tipuana flower, that plant species native to South America that these days is carpeting, beautifully, by the way, the streets, squares and parks of Barcelona and the metropolitan area. He also recorded videos of some specimens in full agony, as if they were Molière, giving rise to the legend that yellow brings bad luck when it comes out on stage. The question, thus, remained in the air. Is the tipuana flower toxic for these hymenopterans? Go the answer in the first paragraph. Nope.
What Pau G. (thanks for that) has partially opened with his curiosity is a door to a subject that has not been treated much. Is Barcelona an inadvisable ecosystem for bees? Well, it seems not entirely. It is a city, depending on how you look at it, ‘bee friendly’. This is stated by Gerardo Caja, professor responsible for the UABee project carried out by the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) to unravel the mysteries of the so-called disappearance syndrome of bees, that brutal mortality that this species has suffered for years and that puts in danger, much more than one might suppose, biodiversity on Earth.
What happens with the abelles i les tipes (Tipuana tipu)? Us hi heu fixat que sota aquests arbres, in flowering time, is ple d’abelles agonitzant or apparently dead? I explain the one that I wear for some years observing Badalona…?? pic.twitter.com/qdDHAiVPCp
– Pau G. (@Larax_gaul) June 16, 2022
“On the contrary, the tipuanas are not harmful to bees & rdquor ;, he clarifies. Not only that, hives with Tipuana honey have already been located in the city. The bees, in fact, are being killed in Barcelona and in the rest of the metropolitan area by a parasite, varroa, a tiny spider-like mite that sits on the back of bees to consume its fat. He is not an occasional guest. It is a plague. Varroas infect hives. Inside their cells, the larvae can already grow with parasites that limit their growth. It happens here, but also in the rest of Europe, Asia and America. Beekeepers know well what they are up against. There are treatments to heal honeycombs, but in some cases they are chemical products that, if poorly measured, entail risks.
At the feet of some tipuanas, to respond more specifically to Pau G.’s question, there may be dozens of bee carcasses because, from the point of view of this species, the flowering of this tree is a kind of Nectar Oktoberfest. It is a collection opportunity that they do not miss. They may be weak from varroa damage, but they don’t stop working. They are bees.
…Això is the one who passes by, it seems that vulguin treure’s something about and they don’t stop moure’s and wallowing, really it’s quite angoixant. pic.twitter.com/BxNPftuA7x
– Pau G. (@Larax_gaul) June 16, 2022
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More threats hang over them. This summer an exponential growth of Asian hornet nests is feared, another major problem for bees. Every day that it goes hunting, a wasp returns to the nest with the dismembered thorax of about 25 bees. They are the sustenance of their young. Animal life in the city is very animal. But you can always look at the glass as half full. There is animal life in the city.
In a way, the presence of bees, that aforementioned ‘bee friendly’ metropolis tag, can be attributed in part to a happy decision made by the Municipal Institute of Parks and Gardens a quarter of a century ago. Within his plan to reduce the monoculture of bananas, he assigned trees with showy flowers to the chamfers of different neighborhoods of the Eixample. Sophoras in Sant Antoni, cercis in Esquerra del Eixample, lime trees in La Dreta, cinnamon trees in Sagrada Família and jacarandas in Fort Pienc. Although that project was not 100% completed, the results of it, measured in the presence of bees, are happily evident.