Urban Bees Face a Flower Deficit, Says Swiss Study

[marmar]

(Bloomberg CityLab) A recent upsurge in urban beekeeping is outstripping some cities’ abilities to provide for their growing ranks of pollinators, a new study of cities across Switzerland indicates.

The number of registered beehives in 14 Swiss cities expanded from 3,139 in 2012 to 9,370 in 2018, says a new paper published in NPJ Urban Sustainability, part of the Nature portfolio of publications. Yet none of those cities had adequate green space to support their bees, according to modeling by the paper’s authors, two ecologists from the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research.

“We’re adding thousands of beehives in a city without any knowledge of the available resources,” said Joan Casanelles Abella, a Ph.D. student who co-authored the paper with senior scientist Marco Moretti. “We just assume the city can provide because bees eat floral resources, and we perceive that there are unlimited flowers in the city.”

The researchers characterized their study as “a first attempt to quantify the sustainability of urban beekeeping.” Their results add statistical heft to skepticism that has emerged alongside a recent trend — the proliferation of honeybee hives on urban rooftops, often installed by beekeeping firms whose clients are companies looking to burnish their green credentials. One concern with this arrangement, raised in an article earlier this week in CityLab, is whether the firms that install and maintain urban hives are taking adequate steps to make sure there’s enough forage for imported and native pollinators. The honeybees can outcompete wild bee species, butterflies and other local insects that depend on city trees and plantings for food. ....................(more)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-14/urban-bees-lack-pollen-says-new-study-of-14-swiss-cities

[abqtommy]

1. I did a little research and found that it is possible to build a "bee feeder" using a can of

sugar water with a piece of cloth for a stopper/wick.

https://crowscroft.blogspot.com/ scroll way down

search results for >how do i build a "bee feeder"<

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=how+do+i+build+a+%22bee+feeder%22+&t=ffab&ia=web