For the umpteenth year in a row, the criticism has not been lifted. Nature lovers wonder why the colorful bee paradise ‘Honey Highway’ along the N231 between the Kwakel (Uithoorn) and Aalsmeer has been mowed flat again. If the ‘bee highway’ is clipped every year, it is feared that the bees will not stand a chance. But is that right? NH dives into the flowers and the bees and gets to the bottom of it.
‘Wow, what a beautiful field of flowers. I have to take a picture of that on the way back’, thought Amstelvener Victor van Honk when he drove along the Honey Highway in De Kwakel in 2019. When he comes back for the photo, all he finds is a bare lawn.
In a tweet, Victor sounds the alarm at the municipality. “Is that the intention? Those bees should be able to come here, right?”, he writes. The municipality of Aalsmeer responds: “We also noticed […] This probably should not have been mowed” and refers to the administrator of the piece of land in the province of Noord-Holland.
To view this content, you must accept cookies.
The following year he again finds a bare lawn, and this year it’s hit again, he sees when he drives past it earlier this week. “Mowed early every year and this year the board [met de tekst ‘Honey Highway, blijvend paradijs voor bijen’, red] also threw in the towel”, he responds again with a dose of cynicism on Twitter. “You just have to be there.”
To view this content, you must accept cookies.
“It’s the same every year,” Victor tells NH. “I then report to the municipality or the province, but everyone points at each other, so I just stopped doing that.” Still, it doesn’t let him go completely. Also this year he raises the situation with the municipality of Aalsmeer, and receives the same answer: “This probably should not have been mowed.”
Province statement
The province says that the Honey Highway is deliberately mowed, and that even happens twice a year.
“Emerging seed mixture will first grow into flowery vegetation”, let the province know to NH. “Then the flowers wither and lose the seeds,” she describes the process called “sowing.” “After ‘sowing’ it can be mowed. That is about mid-July.”
“The second bloom is the most important time for the insects because of their winter supply”
Nevertheless, the province promises that the current arid plain will soon look a lot brighter again within a few months, although that will not be for long. “There will be a second bloom and this period is an important time for the insects because of their winter stock. Mid-September will be mowed again.”
In addition to ‘sowing’ withered flowers, the field is also sown every autumn with a seed mix of various types of flowers. “The seeds germinate in the next flowering season along with the sown mixture and in this way the flowery mixture becomes more and more dense.”
Customization
Initiator of the ‘bee highway’ Deborah Post confirms that the field is mowed twice a year, and this recently happened along the N231. “The other Honey Highway verges, along the N196, have not yet been mowed.”
Deborah emphasizes that the province is not involved in the mowing, and that the entrepreneurs involved hire their own contractor for this. They can then provide custom work and only mow the field when the flowers have finished blooming. That is now the case along the N231. “Next week the seeds will be shaken out, and the clippings will be removed in a week.”
Mistake
A claim made by the province that Post says is incorrect is that the Honey Highway is reseeded every fall to increase flower density in the fields. This happened when the bee highway was built in 2018 and after the flower meadow was wrongly shortened in 2020 to make room for Liander’s excavation work. “But after that we got decent money,” emphasizes Deborah.
As for the signs in the field: according to Deborah, they need to be replaced. Next week there will be two new boards.
In that year, NH took a look at the bee highway, which was in full bloom at that time and attracted countless insects.
Bee highway in De Kwakel – NH News