Of the more of bees that are calculated that they exist in the world, none is as well known as that of honey, Apis mellifera, Domesticated by humans for millennia, as well as goats, cows or horses. When talking about, most people automatically think of the insects of the hives taken care of by their special costumes to protect themselves from the bites. However, colonies of wild features that produce honey in trees and other cavities in natural spaces can also be found. This is what the book shows , of photographer Ingographer and scientist Jürgen Tautz, a work now published in Spanish by the Earth’s fertility publishing house that gets inside the nests of these incredible social insects in Germany’s Floretas to claim the great importance of wild populations.
The first surprise of the researchers who study these wild colonies of honey bees in Europe is that there are many more than those thought. , pioneer in these studies, he estimated that in the Arnot forest, in the state of New York, there was a tree inhabited by these pollinizers per square kilometer. But astonishment is much greater when their behavior and curious mechanisms to defend themselves are observed closely when they live autonomously. For example, unlike what happens in the hives of the beekeepers, in the nests of the trees the bees live with other species with which they establish positive associations, such as the pseudoscorpions, which feed on the varroa mites, one of the main parasites that threaten pollinants. Although conservationism has never paid too much attention to these insects, due to the overabundance of beekeeping, a sector considered even livestock, in recent years the interest in the United States and Europe in these wild colonies has grown a lot. Above all, with the problem of mortality in the hives of the beekeepers and the decline of many pollinators.
“Hypi bees managed by humans are subject to great pressure for diseases and parasites. Wild bees, obviously, survive these problems. When studying what contributes to the success of wild bees, we hope to learn how we can better support controlled bees,” says Tautz, author of the book and professor emeritus at the University of Wurzburg (Germany). “A second important aspect is that wild bees populations are configured by natural selection, not by human selection. In this way, wild bees host a genetic treasure that one day could be fundamental.”
After establishing himself in Spain, the beekeeper Alejandro Machado, raised in Germany but with Galician mother, read on the Internet that some German researchers were looking for collaboration to find colonies of wild holifer bees that nest in the trees. “I wrote to them and told them: I am in Galicia and here there are honey bees that live in the trees, on the walls, in the electrical posts …”. This is how two Tautz collaborators at the University of Wurzburg, Benjamin Rutschmann and Patrick Kohl, began monitoring populations of these pollinating companies in Xinzo de Limia (Ourense).
These insects need holes to nest, but are not able to do them for themselves, so they often use the holes that leave carpenters in the trees. They select cavities away from the ground, a way of also protecting themselves from the sweet bears, when there are. All this makes it not easy to locate and study these nests scattered throughout the forests. However, in Galicia German researchers discovered that it is much easier when wild bees live within hollow concrete, very accessible and localizable electric posts, so they focused their research on these locations. “In agricultural landscapes without natural nesting habitats, these posts act as artificial hollow trees,” says Rutschmann. According to, after checking 214 piles, in 29 they found bees colonies Bee mellifera Iberiensis A subspecies of the Iberian Peninsula (of a darker color) that, despite the expansion of certain lineages in current beekeeping due to performance issues, is still used in many hives of the country’s beekeepers.
Ornosa Concepción, entomologist specializing in pollinators of the Complutense University, differentiates two types of colonies that can be found in nature: those of truly wild bees that have nothing to do with the domesticated populations, “which in Spain is very difficult, but who knows”, and the asilvestrications from swarms out of the horn of the beekeepers of the beekeepers, “very common here”. The escapes From this second modality they are inherent to the very nature of the species, because when the colonies reach a certain population, half of the bees leave the nest with a queen to look for another settlement. In hives, beekeepers are usually pending to change them box before this happens, but this does not always happen. “Finding resources in the area, varied flowers, bushes, pastures, and possibility of nests, of course that honey bees can survive for themselves, as they are very versatile,” says Ornosa. “In class I always told students that the best conservation is non -intervention: nature works better if we do not go by putting the hand. That we must intervene to restore a landscape, because yes, but the more natural is the better means the species that live there.”
For Patrick Kohl, another of the German researchers who monitor wild colonies in electric posts in xinzo de limia, is still early to draw conclusions about these populations. As he says, “in general, we cannot distinguish wild bees from raised bees depending on their genetics or morphology in most places in Europe.” “Therefore, a crucial issue in our research is whether wild colonies cohorts can form self -sufficient populations; that is, we study if they would be stable over time based on their own survival and reproduction,” says the scientist. “What is usually accepted as a ‘truly wild’ population is one that does not depend on the immigration of swarms from the Colmenares. For example, in the study region in Galicia, according to the survival rates observed, the wild colonies would need to produce two to three swarms a year to maintain the population.”
The beekeep Galician Machado argues that he has been watching out of the electric posts to these bees for a few years. In his case, this discovery, together with the publications of Seeley and Tautz, have changed their way of looking at the bees and managing their hives. He is contrary to the use of varieties of bees very different from the natives, such as buckfast, which are supposedly more meek and bite less. Or with constant intervention in hives, either feeding insects or providing them with health treatments. On the contrary, try to act as little as possible, so that bees live in a similar way to the wild. “What I do is to leave them honey,” he emphasizes. “Here is a conflict of interest, because how much honey gets out, more money,” says Machado. “I don’t live from honey and I don’t want to live on honey, exactly for that reason.”
One of the main surprises addressed by Arndt and Tautz’s book is how, despite the multiple mixtures and hybridizations of current beekeeping, honey bees have not lost their wild form. “Why after so many millennia of human beekeeping there are still no holifers who are as different from its original appearance as a sausage dog is a wolf?” Tautz asks. “Two reasons explain this fact. First of all, the reproductive biology of bees and their mating behavior greatly hinder their reproduction such as cattle or pigs,” explains the German professor. · “Secondly, the distribution of genes within a population and haplodiploidy as a basis for sexual determination give rise to a system very resistant to changes. And when they occur, they happen very slowly. All this prevents a rapid evolution in bees.”
