Beekeeper fashion has consequences in the city
When tens of thousands of bees suddenly hang from a bicycle handlebar, it’s an impressive spectacle. It also scares some city dwellers. But bee colonies multiply, the offspring look for a new place to live. And these weeks are swarming time.
Even in big cities like berlin, where there has been a small bee boom for years. Blacking of beekeepers is not deliberate – but sometimes it happens anyway.
"We now have about 10.000 bee colonies in the city," says benedikt polaczek, chairman of the berlin beekeepers’ association. Beekeeping is a very natural process. But most beekeepers tried to prevent him so they would not lose honey. "But we won’t be able to get a 100 percent handle on it," says polaczek. Some new beekeepers lack experience. And it can happen even to colleagues of many years that a colony swarms.
When a stray colony is spotted, not only the fire department but also around 50 volunteer beekeepers from the beekeepers’ association take care of the buzzing bees. One of them is jonas horning, who then receives a call – as he did recently from a hobby beekeeper in an allotment in wilmersdorf. Heavily packed with a swarm box and accessories, the 40-year-old arrives. But it comes too late. The bees left their temporary quarters, a pear tree, a few minutes ago. Where they have buzzed off to? Not to see.
The wilmersdorfer imker and horning are exchanged. "Actually, the bees were not allowed to swarm at all. They did not behave according to the textbook," reports the beekeeper. He had removed the so-called swarm cells for young queens, so that the bees lacked the basis for swarming. Because only when new queens are in sight will the old queen and her workers look for a new home.
"You have to watch very carefully. If you miss even one swarm cell, the bees will still swarm," says polaczek. Then it goes round. "The bees like to settle in openings of house walls or in other hollow spaces," adds horning. He has already caught about 100 schwarme in berlin, among other things from balconies or windowsills. "You have to catch the bulk of the colony with the queen as much as possible, the rest of the bees usually fly off after them," he says. There was no need to be afraid either, because the black bees had no honey and therefore nothing to defend.
"Black bees are the sweetest and most peaceful creatures of all. You can stick your hand in and not be afraid," adds johannes wirz, chairman of the mellifera association. He has dedicated himself to the so called wesensgemaben beekeeping and uses the swarm drive as a natural method of reproduction. The hives are captured before they can swarm.
"Beekeeping is hip and en vogue, but you also have to take care of your bees," says beekeeper and volunteer swarm catcher alfred krajewski. Just a few weeks ago, he took a bunch of bees from a traffic light in friedrichshain. "It was quite exciting, because the road was very busy and many people were watching," says the beekeeper. His action ended up with a photo on twitter.
The fire department is also often called when bees are found. "We are responsible for public areas such as streets, squares, schools and daycare centers," says chief fire officer and hobby beekeeper michael eggers. There are at least about 15 beekeepers in the fire department who could stand in for such incidents. They wanted to organize themselves even better in order to be better positioned for such operations. "Sometimes we also call swarm catchers from the beekeepers’ association, but even they are not always available," says eggers.
Horning and krajewski usually pass the volker on to other beekeepers, also to beginners who are looking for their own volker. Volker, which are not caught, are as a rule condemned to death. "About 80 to 90 percent don’t survive," says horning. Without treatment against the varroa mite, a colony cannot survive in nature in the long term. This fate might also befall the bees of hobby beekeeper heilmann, if they are not rescued by another swarm catcher.
